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AMERICAN 



WRITERS OF TO-DAY 



HENRY C. VEDDER 



A perfect Judge will read each work of Wit 
With the same spirit that its author writ: 
Survey the Whole, nor seek slight faults to find 
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind. 

Pope : Essay on Criticism. 




/. 









SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY 

New York . . . BOSTON . . . Chicago 
1894 



f^ 



Copyright, 189^, 
By Silver, Burdett and Company. 



All rights reserved. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



TO HER 

WHOSE SYMPATHETIC COMPANIONSHIP, 

WHOSE LOVE OF THE GOOD, 

THE BEAUTIFUL, 

THE TRUE, 

HAVE BEEN AN INSPIRATION IN ALL MY WORK 
THROUGH MANY HAPPY YEARS, 

I DEDICATE 

THIS BOOK. 



PREFACE. 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS once defined luncheon 
as " a reflection on breakfast and an insult to 
dinner." In a similar spirit, one might define a 
preface as a reflection on the author's skill and an 
insult to his readers' intelligence; for, if a book 
requires elaborate exegesis, if its purpose demands 
careful explanation, something must needs be wrong 
with either book or reader. Nobody need feel under 
the slightest obligation, therefore, to read this pref- 
ace; but should it occur to some one to glance a 
second time at this page, let him be assured that 
these studies of contemporary American literature 
make no pretence of being complete, comprehensive, 
exhaustive. There was a vague purpose in the 
author's mind, when he began writing, to supplement 
these chapters with some attempt at a general sur- 
vey of the American literature of our own time, after 
the manner of Mrs. Oliphant's " Victorian Age of 
English Literature." This would have given them 
more formal completeness, even if it did not other- 
wise add to their value. Should the reception of his 



vJ PREFACE. 

book encourage him to persevere, he may yet fulfil 
that intention. 

In the meantime, he ventures to hope that what 
he has done may fill a vacant place. There is very 
little that makes any pretence of being serious criti- 
cism of the writers of our own day. Let any one 
ransack even a large library, and he will in most 
cases go away empty-handed of books that will aid 
him in the study and comprehension of current lit- 
erature. Some of our leading periodicals contain 
reviews of lately published books that are worthy 
to rank with the best critical writing; but these 
reviews only partially supply the reader's wants. 
What he desires is an intelligent and critical account 
of an author's whole performance, not a review of 
any particular work; something that will help him 
to comprehend the nature and value of a writer's 
contribution to our literature, to estimate his signifi- 
cance, to perceive his characteristics and idiosyn- 
cracies, — in a word, to read him understandingly. 
If these studies have any value, it is their fitness in 
some sort to satisfy this desire. The writer does 
not afi"ect what Scott felicitously called " the big 
bow-wow style," nor has he any ambition to be a 
Jeffrey with a " This will never do " for anything that 
he does not himself like; still less does he aspire 
to make and unmake authors' reputations. The 
motto placed on the titlepage has been throughout 
borne in mind. He has tried to read our American 



PREFACE. 



Vll 



authors sympathetically, intelligently, diligently, and 
to report as well as he is able the results of this 
reading. Making no claims to infallibihty, he has 
striven to give his report honestly, and 

"nothing extenuate 
Nor set down aught in malice." 

Partly for the convenience of those who lack 
other books of reference, partly because the facts 
recited throw a side-light on the literary work of 
the writers studied, some biographical details are 
interwoven with the critical remarks. If to any the 
book seem to lose dignity because of this, possibly 
in the judgment of other readers this feature will add 
to its interest and value. 

New York, October 2, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. Edmund Clarence Stedman 3 

II. Francis Parkman 27 

III. William Dean Howells 43 

IV. Henry James . 69 

V. Charles Dudley Warner 87 

VI. Thomas Bailey Aldrich 104 

VII. Mark Twain 124 

VIII. Francis Marion Crawford 141 

IX. Frances Hodgson Burnett 158 

X. Charles Egbert Craddock 171 

XI. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 187 

XII. Adeline D. T. Whitney 201 

XIII. Bret Harte 212 

XIV. Edward Everett Hale 230 

XV. Edward Eggleston 248 

XVI. George Washington Cable 261 

XVII. Richard Henry Stoddard 275 

XVIII. Francis Richard Stockton ...... 288 

XIX. Joaquin Miller 301 

Index 317 



AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



I. 

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 

AMERICA has as yet produced no poet who was 
poet and nothing else. No counterpart of a 
Wordsworth or a Tennyson, conscious of his high 
calling, has devoted his life to the faithful and single- 
hearted worship of the Muses. This may be, in part, 
due to the hard conditions of life in a new world. 
Every man has had to face the problem of making a 
living, and we are even now only beginning to see grow 
up among us a leisure class. A people that have had 
to subdue the wilderness, to tunnel the mountains, to 
bridge rivers, to build railways and telegraphs and 
factories, to dig wealth out of the bowels of the earth, 
may be pardoned if they have somewhat neglected 
the worship of the beautiful in eager quest of the 
useful. Our country has thus far been too deeply 
intent on utilitarian aims, its ideals have been too 
gross and unspiritual, for the up-bringing of great 
poets. 

For, even had the poet been born, he had been 
given scant encouragement to devote his life to his 
art. A Tennyson, a Scott, a Byron, receives princely 



4 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

sums for his verse, but what American poet has 
been able to live by his art alone? Of all our 
Scant rewards singers, Longfcllow Came nearest to this, 
poesy. yet he was far past middle life before he 

was able to surrender his bread-winning profession 
and give all his time to literature. Only one born 
to affluence, like a Browning, can venture to devote 
his life to work for which his fellows show so slight 
esteem and offer a reward so niggard. 

As a compensation, in some sort, for the lack of 
great poets, America has been dowered with an un- 
usual proportion of clever men of letters, — poets, but 
not poets solely ; men whose Yankee shrewdness and 
adaptability have enabled them to do many kinds of 
work, and to touch nothing that they have not adorned. 
Poe,^ Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Lowe^ll, among 
the dead. Holmes, Stedman, Aldrich, Howells, among 
the living, are names that at once suggest themselves 
to us. It may well be that our literature as a whole 
is more brilliant and many-sided than it would have 
been had these and others been able to give themselves 
wholly to poetry. There are those who hold that, if 
one has the true afflatus in any degree, and is con- 
scious of a message to deliver to the world, he will 
find a way and a time to speak it forth. Much may 
plausibly be said for this view of the case ; one instinct- 
ively disbelieves in the " mute, inglorious Miltons," 
for had they been Miltons they had been neither mute 
nor inglorious. And yet, there may easily be such a 
thing as the partial delivery of a message. The sky- 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 5 

lark will surely sing, but we may believe that he will 
soar higher and pipe a clearer, more melodious note, 
when the heavens are propitious. 



I. 



Edmund Clarence Stedman was born at Hart- 
ford, Conn., October 8, 1833. He is a scion of the 
purest New England stock. Like many other men of 
genius, he seems to have inherited his mental and 
moral traits largely from his mother, a sister of William 
E. Dodge, and daughter of the Rev. Aaron Cleveland, 
great-grandfather of Grover Cleveland. Quite early 

in life he showed special aptitude for lit- An early ap- 
titude for litera- 

erature, and gave promise of at least con- '"re. 
siderable talent. While a student a*- Yale College 
he won honors in Greek and English, obtaining first 
prize with a poem on "Westminster Abbey " that was 
published in the " Yale Literary Miscellany" in 1851. 
For some boyish escapade he was suspended from 
college in his junior year, and never returned to take 
his degree. What his offence was does not appear, 
but that it was no serious affair is evidenced by the 
mildness of the penalty, and still more by the subse- 
quent action of his college, which in 1871 restored 
him to his class rank and conferred on him the degree 
of Master of Arts. 

His college course being terminated in this summary 
way, young Stedman adopted journalism as his calling, 
and, after a brief and not too profitable experience 



6 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

with country newspapers in Connecticut, he found a 
place on the staff of the " New York Tribune " in 1854. 
Here he remained until i860, when he joined the staff 
of the " New York World," and for some time served 
as war correspondent. As a journalist, one gathers 
that he was faithful, hard-working, and reasonably 
successful, without being brilliant. Perhaps enough 
of his strict New England training still abode with him 
to hinder his advancement. One requires an ample 
stock of native assurance and an acquired hardihood 
above common, and must overboard with all his fine 
scruples and nice sensitiveness of conscience, if he 
A trial of jour- would get to the top lu joumalism. It may 
nahsm. ^^ reasonably conjectured that the discov- 

ery of this had something to do with Mr. Stedman's 
course ; if so, it is to his credit that he was not willing 
to pay the price of success in the calling he had igno- 
rantly chosen. Another reason doubtless actuated 
him ; he still cherished dreams of becoming a poet. 
He had continued to woo the Muses at intervals, with 
a flattering degree of success ; and he had grounds 
for hoping that, with added years and experience, if he 
could attain pecuniary independence, he might write 
his name high on the roll of American singers. 

After a brief experience of office-holding, under 
Attorney-General Bates, Mr. Stedman returned to 
New York, and in 1864 became a stock-broker. Those 
were times in which fortunes were daily made " on 
the street," and the still youthful broker may have 
cherished visions of a speedy retirement, and the 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 



spending of the best years of his life among his books, 
in the practice of his beloved art. If such a piurge into 
were his day-dreams, this modern Alnas- ^" ^"^"'' 
char soon found them rudely shattered. He was not 
long in learning that if fortunes are quickly won in 
Wall Street, they are as quickly swept away again. 
It was another lake of Tantalus to the would-be poet. 
Several times he saw his fortune just within his grasp, 
and once it seemed to be fully attained, when a turn 
of fortune's wheel compelled him to begin over again. 
What seemed at the beginning to be but the occupa- 
tion of a few years at most, turned out to be the 
grinding work of a lifetime. Within a few years, if 
rumor is to be trusted, dame Fortune has been more 
kind, but her favors have come too late. The pro- 
ductive years of stalwart manhood are gone. The 
desire of great achievement doubtless remains, but the 
full opportunity can never return. It is the old story: 
Ah ! si la jeunesse savait — si la vieillesse pouvait ! 
" When I was a boy," says Thackeray somewhere, " I 
used to pass a confectioner's window. There was taffy 
in it; I wanted some, but the taffy was a shilling, and 
I had none. Now I have the shilling, but I don't care 
for taffy." 

II. 

Mr. Stedman's versifying began, as we have seen, 
in his college days. His prize poem he has never 
reprinted, possibly because he shares Macaulay's 
opinion that a prize poem is like a prize sheep, and 



8 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

that " prize sheep are good for nothing but to make 
tallow candles, and prize poems are good for nothing 
but to light them." It must be confessed that Tenny- 
son's " Timbuctoo " is a powerful confirmation of this 
theory, and it might be difficult to name any other 
production that would tend to disprove it. But Mr. 
Stedman has not exercised this severity in the case of 
all \{\'s> juvenilia, and for this one is grateful, since we 
are now able to trace the growth of his genius and his 
art as we could not otherwise. What among his early 
writings he deemed worthy of preservation, he included 
Poems, Lyric ^^ " Po^ms, Lyric and Idyllic," which ap- 
andidyihc. pearcd in i860 with the imprint of Charles 
Scribner. The verses that formed this volume may 
still be found in the author's collected works, of which 
they fill the first eighty-five pages. 

This was a rather remarkable book for a young man 
of twenty-seven to print, — remarkable chiefly for its 
promise, as was but natural, but remarkable in some 
measure for actual achievement also. The verse 
manifested present as well as potential power. We 
find, what we might expect, obvious traces of the 
influence of other poets, the result of generous admi- 
ration and unconscious imitation. There is more than 
a suggestion of Hood and Saxe, especially of the latter, 
in " The Diamond Wedding; " and one asks himself 
whether " Penelope " would have been written except 
by a poet who had read and even studied Tennyson's 
" Ulysses." " Flood Tide," too, is in the spirit, as well 
as the measure, of " Locksley Hall," and couplets like 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 



the following might well have been among the frag- 
ments that the elder poet was unable to work into his 
theme : — 

" Shame upon all listless dreamers early hiding from the strife, 
Sated with some little gleaning of the harvest-fields of life ! " 

" Calm, and slowly lifting upward, rose the eastern glory higher, 
Gilding sea, and shore, and vessel, and the city-crowning spire." 

In " The Sleigh-Ride," again, we have a reminiscence 
of Shelley, and a little scrutiny would doubtless detect 
other cases of similarity. Fortunate is the youthful 
poet who chooses such masters as these in his art. 
But there are verses here in which the poet utters a 
note of his own ; " The Singer " is a nearly perfect bit 
of workmanship, and " The Freshet " is an idyll that 
only country-bred readers can fully appreciate. 

Probably the most spirited piece in the book was, 
" How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry," and it still 
ranks among the best poems inspired by xiiejoim 
the event that it commemorates; indeed, J^--"^" '^='"«'J- 
one is much inclined to rank it above all competitors. 
Though the poet skips the hard places in Brown's' 
Kansas career, — if he knew of the Pottawotamie mas- 
sacres when he wrote, — he indulges in less unmeasured 
hero-worship than has been the fashion in certain cir- 
cles of the North. But if his poem would hardly have 
passed muster then (and it would still less pass now) 
as a cool historic estimate of John Brown, it is still 
worthy of respect as an outburst of lofty moral sen- 
timent and passionate patriotic feeling, however ill- 



lO AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

chosen the occasion, or unworthy the object. Almost 
prophetic, in the Hght of subsequent events, seems this 
closing stanza, written before Brown's execution, in 
answer to the cry of " Hang him ! " that went up from 
the South : — 

" But, Virginians, don't do it! for I tell you that the flagon. 
Filled with blood of Old Brown's offspring, was first poured 

by Southern hands ; 
And each drop from Old Brown's life-veins, like the red gore 

of the dragon, 
May spring up a vengeful Fury, hissing through your slave- 
worn lands ! 

And Old Brown, 
Ossawatomie Brown, 
May trouble you more than ever, when you 've nailed his coffin 
down ! " 

The publication of this volume may have convinced 
the judicious few that a poet had appeared who " knew 
to sing and build the lofty rhyme," but it certainly 
made no great sensation. On the whole, it may be 
said to have been " favorably received," — a phrase 
that has a pretty sound and is usefully vague. The 
times were not auspicious for the launching of poeti- 
cal ventures. The people of the North were too 
intent on sterner themes to regard verses, except 
such as had a martial ring or appealed to the rising 
antislavery fervor. The John Brown ballad was the 
only poem that was keyed to the feeling of the day, 
and therefore the book had only un succh d'estime, 
though it deserved more. All things considered, it 
was fortunate to escape a worse fate. 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN li 

III. 

The second period of Mr. Stedman's poetic activity- 
is the decade between i860 and 1870. It is distin- 
guished by the publication of two volumes, — " Alice 
of Monmouth " (New York, 1864) and " The Blameless 
Prince" (Boston, 1869), — and was rounded off by the 
issue in 1873 of a complete edition of the poetical 
works, bearing the imprint of Ticknor and Fields. It 
was during this ten or twelve years that the greater 
part of Mr. Stedman's work as poet was done. Ab- 
sorbed as he was, first by the most exacting and 
exhausting of callings, and afterwards by the hardly- 
less distracting cares of business, he was quite unable 
to repress the spirit that strove within him for utter- 
ance in verse. 

" Alice of Monmouth " was described in the sub- 
title as " An Idyll of the Great War," and other poems 
were included in the volume. This title-poem was a 
romance in verse. Experiments of this kind have been 
sometimes phenomenally successful, but not always. 
Scott gained an unbounded popularity, as ^^ ^^ n of the 
permanent as it was sudden, by means of Great war. 
his " Marmion " and " The Lady of the Lake," but 
even he failed disastrously in some of his later ven- 
tures. Tennyson, a far greater poet, though he 
measurably succeeded in " The Princess," failed dis- 
mally in " Maud," which is only saved from oblivion 
by two, or at most three, exquisite lyrics embedded 
in the rubbish. The younger Lytton, as " Owen 



12 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Meredith," achieved immediate but transitory fame 
among sentimental misses with " Lucile," — thanks to 
heroic steahng from George Sand, — but it is now 
pretty well agreed that while " Lucile " may be a 
romance, it is not a poem. " Alice of Monmouth " 
was neither a disastrous failure nor a marvellous suc- 
cess. It is a story that ought to have appealed to 
American readers, in the midst of the Civil War, with 
peculiar force. It has poetic merit of a high order, 
but it never became a popular book. This fate is not 
a little hard to justify, or even to understand. There 
was no lack of popular interest in the theme ; readers 
greedily devoured, as fast as the groaning presses 
could turn them out, war novels of the most trashy 
and sensational kind, written in an indescribable style, 
that can be pronounced neither English nor American ; 
there seemed to be literally no limit to the appetite of 
the public for reading of this kind. It may be that 
the workmanship of this poem was too fine, its passion 
too sublimated, its charm too ethereal, to please the 
multitude. It is still so unfamiliar to American readers, 
of more than ordinary intelligence and culture, that 
one might quote from it almost anywhere and vainly 
challenge a roomful of such people to identify the 
passage. One exception should be noted, — which, 
however, is only partially an exception, — and that is 
the spirited " Cavalry Song," which is the fifth number 
of Part XI. of the poem : — 

" Our good steeds snuff the evening air, 
Our pulses with their purpose tingle ; 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 1 3 

The foeman's fires are twinkling there ; 
He leaps to hear our sabres jingle ! 

HALT ! 
Each carbine sends its whizzing ball : 
Now, cling ! clang ! forward all, 
Into the fight ! " 

This song of three stanzas is, as it deserves to be, 
one of the best known and most admired of Stedman's 
poems. Yet it is safe to say, not one in a thousand 
of those who have read it in some anthology of 
American verse holds it for anything but an indepen- 
dent lyric, or would fail to be astonished on hearing 
that it is but a small portion of a poem of some fifty 
closely printed octavo pages. 

" The Blameless Prince " is even less known. In 
this case one cannot wish the verdict of the public 
reversed. It is not a wholesome poem. A vein of 
cynicism runs through it that quite vitiates TheEiame- 
it for those who still believe that men are '^^^ ^"""' 
true and women chaste. The burden of the story is 
that those who are praised by the world for purity and 
honor are sinners in secret ; and yet, being such sin- 
ners, deserve that we should pity and spare them, for 

" He who brightest is, and best. 
Still may fear the secret test 
That shall try his heart aright." 

A tale whose moral is so immoral is deservedly 
neglected by readers. It is the one thing in all Mr. 
Stedman's writings, whether verse or prose, that is not 
clean and bracing. 



14 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

In the collected poems of 1873 were most of those 
with which Mr. Stedman's name is most closely con- 
nected, — those of which one instinctively thinks 
whenever his name is mentioned. There were four 
spirited war-lyrics — " Sumter," " Wanted — a Man," 
" Gettysburg," and " Kearney at Seven Pines " — 
The first " com- wliicli, of their kind, are scarcely surpassed 
piete " edition, jj^ q^,j. literature. All of these but the 
" Sumter " have been included, along with the 
" Cavalry Song," in the collection of " American War 
Ballads and L}'rics " made by Mr. George Gary Eggles- 
ton ; and every reader of taste will pronounce them to 
be among the very best things in the two volumes. 
Very few of the great mass of poems called forth by 
the Civil War still stir the blood like these. 

Verses of a more peaceful sort were also first 
gathered in this volume. " Pan in Wall Street " is 
deservedly a prime favorite with everybody who can 
appreciate a blend of fancy and humor. Who has not 
felt the charm of " Laura, My Darling," the poem/<?r 
excellence of all wedded lovers? What reminiscences 
of boyhood days and rural sports in " Country Sleigh- 
ing" and "The Doorstep," — the latter worthy to live 
alongside of " Zekle's Courtin'." And where is there 
a prettier child's poem than " What the Winds Bring" ? 

In all these later poems there is but one that even 
suggests the manner of any other poet. One may be 
wrong about that instance, but in the " Dartmouth 
Ode " are tones that seem like echoes of Lowell's 
" Commemoration Ode." The resemblance is more 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 1 5 

in the structure of the verse and the general manner 
than in anything more specific, except in one case to 
be noted. Of any actual imitation there is of course 
no trace ; there are no verbal similarities ; there is not 
even the same manner of handling the theme; and 
the theme itself is distinct from that of Lowell's ode, 
though similar. Still, the eighth strophe, in which the 
character of Chase is described and eulogized, im- 
presses one as strikingly like Lowell's familiar tribute 
to Lincoln. The suggestion is so spontaneous and 
so strong, one can hardly resist an inference that 
Lowell's ode suggested in some degree Mr. Stedman's, 
and in particular that the two passages specified are 
thus related. One hesitates about saying this, but 
as the resemblance is no closer than Mr. Stedman has 
himself traced between Tennyson and Theocritus, it 
can do no harm to let it stand. It is certainly no 
worse to owe a hint to a contemporary poet than to 
one who has been dead long enough to be forgotten, 
though perhaps the choice is less prudent. 

Mr. Stedman's latest verse has shown no falling-off 
from that of his prime. He had not passed his prime, 
indeed, when his last book appeared, — " Hawthorne 
and Other Poems" (Boston, 1876). These verses were 
included in the " Household Edition " of his poetical 
works (Boston, 1884). On various occasions, unfor- 
nately too infrequent, he has broken silence since that 
time, but he has published no volume. His careful 

ri-.i . • , 1 • 1 , , ,1 workmanship. 

Ihere is, m this latest verse, the same 

careful and conscientious literary art, the same high 



1 6 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

purpose, that mark all his best work. None of our 
American poets has been less content with " the first 
fine careless rapture " of song, none has spared less 
the labor of the file. Not that his poems appear 
labored, that they smell of the lamp — that were indeed 
crude literary art ; rather his verse by its very perfect- 
ness of form, its apparently unstudied simplicity and 
easy grace, gives token of the severe labor without 
which this supreme excellence is unattainable. 

IV. 

With the interruption of his original work, began 
Mr. Stedman's labors as a critic. A sort of introduc- 
tion to this was the editing, in conjunction with Mr. 
T. B. Aldrich, of " Cameos from Landor " (Boston, 
1874). His actual critical work, however, was not 
undertaken until the following year, when the first of 
what proved to be an extended series of essays was 
Victorian published in " Scribner's Magazine " (now 

Poets of "The Century"). One series of these 

essays was collected into a volume, with 
the title "Victorian Poets" (Boston, 1875, London, 
1876); another and later collection being entitled 
"Poets of America" (Boston, 1886). The popularity 
of both volumes was immediate, great, and well de- 
served ; the former has reached its twenty-first edition, 
while the latter is in its eleventh. Nor is the reason 
of this popularity far to seek. For the service under- 
taken in these essays but one other American could 
be thought of as the author's equal in equipment; 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 1/ 

and while to Lowell we may concede equal or superior 
learning and breadth of vision, and a style quite un- 
approachable, we cannot grant that in equipoise, in 
impartial judgment, in coolness of mind, he was Mr. 
Stedman's equal. Lowell, had he attempted a similar 
task, would have written delightful essays, in them- 
selves contributions of high value to our literature, 
apart from their critical content; but in saying this 
does not one hint at their probable defect? They 
would have been rather literature than criticism. In 
our author's case, temperament, scholarship, and ex- 
perience combined to make him almost the ideal 
critic. While by no means incapable of generous 
admiration, he is not prone to let the „. 

' ■■• His equipment 

warmth of his emotion obscure the clear- asacmic. 
ness of his mental operations. His judgment is not 
biassed by affection; he knows how to be kindly just, 
but he does not know how to be weakly partial. The 
partisan of no theory of art, the champion of no school, 
a citizen of the world, his candid spirit and catholic 
taste inspire confidence, not merely in the rectitude of 
his intent, but in the trustworthiness of his interpreta- 
tions, the correctness of his canons, and the accuracy 
of his conclusions. The uninstructed reader instinct- 
ively feels that he is following a safe guide ; and, while 
the instructed reader may differ from the critic on 
questions of detail, he will differ seldom, and then 
with modest self-distrust; and he is not likely to dis- 
pute the sincerity or sanity of that which he declines 
to accept as authoritative. 



AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



Every man has the defects of his quahties, as the 
French say. Mr. Stedman is so thorough an artist in 
verse, he comprehends so fully the resources as well 
as the limitations of his art, that he lacks patience with 
one who seems careless of the mere form of expression. 
This makes his criticism of Browning unsatisfactory, 
because unsympathetic. All that he says is true, or at 
His limita- least iugcnious, but one is conscious through- 
*'°"^' out the essay that the critic has failed to grasp 

and express the whole truth. Indeed, no man to whom 
poetry is primarily an art can understand Browning. 
Mr. Stedman fails, with the best intentions in the 
world, frankly and sincerely to admire Browning, and 
his attempt to force an admiration that he does not 
feel makes his criticism less valuable than is its wont. 
This is the more curious, because he so ardently ad- 
mires Walt Whitman, — a man who was not only not 
an artist, but who lost no opportunity to tell the world 
how much he despised art. 

One of Mr. Stedman's largest critical undertakings 
has been the editing, in connection with Miss Ellen 
The Library M. Hutchinsou, of a " Library of American 

of American 

Literature. Literature " (New York, 1 888-1 89 1 ). This 
library has filled ten large octavo volumes. The 
making of the selections, and the preparation of the 
large amount of critical and biographical matter 
accompanying them, gave abundant scope for the 
exercise of the largest learning, the soundest judg- 
ment, and the best taste. Regarding the value of his 
labors there is no difference of opinion. By common 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 



19 



consent this is the completest collection of representa- 
tive writings of American authors, and the best guide 
to a systematic study of our literature, that has ever 
been made. 

The latest claim of Mr. Stedman on our gratitude 
is the publication of his lectures on " The Nature and 
Elements of Poetry." In this volume he at once dis- 
cusses the fundamental principles of the art of poetry 
and illustrates them from the practice of the great 
masters of the art. The book is thus both creed and 
criticism. He has little faith in untutored genius, in 
those who compose by the light of nature The Nature and 

^ ■> ^ Elements of 

and pour forth in the ears of an astonished Poetry. 
world " their profuse strains of unpremeditated art." 
To him poetry is not merely an art, but the noblest 
of the arts, and not the least difficult, — as little to be 
acquired without study and practice as likely to be 
acquired by practice and study solely 

Definition of terms is always desirable and generally 
indispensable; and a definition of poetry is none the 
less helpful in a discussion of this kind because the 
thing to be defined is vague and elusive, and refuses 
to be adequately expressed in words. Mr. Stedman's 
definition is broad and inclusive, yet sufficiently defi- 
nite : " Poetry is rhythmical, imaginative language, 
expressing the invention, taste, thought, passion, and 
insight, of the human soul." It is the art of expression 
in verse, in briefer terms. But this implies, first of all, 
that the poet have some thought requiring imaginative 
expression, and that he be capable of giving his 



20 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

thought a fitting form. This is why he is poet {poietes, 
maker, creator), and without this he is a mere mechan- 
ical versifier. But how to have such a thought? 
This requires " the vision and the faculty divine," the 
power to see into the very heart of things, the creative 
insight — what, in a word, we mean by " genius." 
But thus far poetry is not sufficiently difi*erentiated 
from prose; we need the further qualification that it 
is the rhythmical expression of the visions of genius. 
Even this does not completely differentiate poetry 
from prose, for there is a prose rhythm, and prose 
may be so imaginative, so like to poetry in all save 
form, as to be best described by the term " poetic 
prose." The rhythm of poetry is marked by regularity, 
while the characteristic of prose rhythm is flexibility 
and variety. Just as soon as sentences become rhyth- 
mical according to a fixed alternation of syllable and 
accent, in regular sequence, the form of expression is 
no longer prose but verse. Mr. Stedman's definition 
Poetiy defined, should, therefore, be amended somewhat as 
follows : " Poetry is the expression in imaginative 
language and in regular rhythm, of the human soul's 
invention, taste, thought, passion, and insight." 

That this element of regularity is the diff"erentiating 
feature of verse, becomes evident when one examines 
the masters of prose. There is rhythmical, imagina- 
tive language in the prose of Milton, of Landor, of 
De Quincey, of Carlyle ; but no two successive sen- 
tences have the same rhythm. In whole pages of 
Dickens and of Blackmore, on the other hand, one 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 21 

finds that regularity of rhythm which is distinctive of 
verse. Some of the most sonorous and majestic pas- 
sages in EngHsh hterature would be spoiled by the 
change of a word here and there, in no way affecting 
the sense, but utterly destroying the rhythm ; while 
the prose style of Dickens and Blackmore would be 
happily mended by such changes as would break up 
the regularity of their rhythmical passages. 

Rhythmical regularity, however, is only one aspect 
of the form of expression that we call poetry. Given 
this, and the fundamental intuition of genius, poetry 
becomes effective, according to Mr. Stedman, through 
beauty, feeling, and imagination. Any work of art 
that produces a serious and lasting impression will be 
found in the end to owe its effect to beauty. That 
which is merely bizarre and audacious can have no 
enduring charm, and endurance is the test of worth in 
art. Beauty in poetry is of two kinds : beauty of 
construction and beauty of detail. Of the Beauty the 

c ,1 1 • r 1 , • • 1- •. chief element 

lormer, the chiei element is simplicity, of poetry, 
which must be attained through naturalness ; while in 
the case of the latter, richness and variety must be 
carefully restrained from the vice of over decoration. 
But, above all, poetry to be beautiful must have the 
attribute that we can name yet cannot describe, — 
charm. 

A step further Mr. Stedman goes. Truth and 
beauty, in the last reduction, he declares to be equiv- 
alent terms, and " beauty is the unveiled shining 
countenance of truth," — a prose version of Keats's 



22 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 

It follows from this that a truth, to be beautiful, 
must be a whole truth. This principle excludes from 
poetry all didacticism, which is essentially the preach- 
ment of the gospel of half-truths by those who have 
not the insight to perceive the soul of truth, the 
expression of which is always beauty. In his con- 
demnation of didacticism, however, Mr. Stedman does 
not include that nobly philosophical strain whose 
Beaut is truth uttcrancc is often the prophecy of inspira- 
truth beauty. ' ^j^^^ j^g^j^ -pj-jg didacticism of Pope's 

" Essay on Man " and of Tennyson's " In Memoriam " 
are at the extreme poles of the poetic art ; the former 
is a collection of rhymed moral sentiments, resembling 
poetry only in the outward form, while the latter is the 
flower of Tennyson's prime, unsurpassed in profound 
feeling, in chaste beauty, and in imaginative phi- 
losophy. Nor by condemning didacticism does Mr. 
Stedman exclude from poetry the highest wisdom, 
that of ethics. He would by no means agree with 
those who declare that art and morals have nothing 
in common. Mr. Oscar Wilde has informed the world 
that a poem is either well-written or ill-written, and 
that is all there is of it. Be it so, Mr. Stedman might 
reply ; a poem is not well written unless it expresses 
the highest verities of righteousness. To infuse a 
"moral " into a work of art is, indeed, to spoil it; but 
that beauty which is " the unveiled shining counte- 
nance of truth " will always carry a moral, the more 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 23 

effective perhaps in that it is not formally expressed. 
Baseness in art satiates without satisfying ; it does not 
bear the supreme test of endurance. Indeed, there is 
no previous writer on the poetic art who grounds it so 
surely on an ethical, even a religious basis, xhe religious 
as Mr. Stedman. In spirit he goes back to ^asis of poetry. 
the time when poetry and the drama were adjuncts of 
a nation's religion, in that he says : — 

" Now the artist not only has a right, but it is his duty, to 
indulge an anthropomorphism of his own. In his conception 
the divine power must be the supreme poet, the matchless 
artist, not only the transcendency, but the immanence of all 
that is adorable in thought, feeling, and appearance. Grant 
that the Creator is the founder of rites and institutes and 
dignities ; yet for the idealist he conceived the sunrise and 
moonrise, the sounds that ravish, the outlines that enchant 
and sway. He sets the colors upon the easel, the harp and 
viol are his invention, he is the model and the clay, his voice 
is in the story and the song. The love and beauty of women, 
the comradeship of man, the joy of student-life, the mimic 
life of the drama as much as the tragedy and comedy of the 
living world, have their sources in his nature ; nor only gravity 
and knowledge, but also irony and wit and mirth, Arcady 
is a garden of his devising. As far as the poet, the artist, is 
creative, he becomes a sharer of the divine imagination and 
power, and even of the divine responsibility. " 

It is possible that to many this idea may seem daring 
to the verge of irreverence, but that can be only 
because it is a thought to which they have Howrecondi- 
not accustomed themselves. No Christian oiogy. 



24 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

thinker who believes in the immanence of God in his 
universe, — that in him, according to the apostle, we 
live and move and have our being, — will discover 
anything disquieting in this theory of art. Rather will 
it adjust itself to his theology and to his understanding 
of the Scriptures with perfect ease, and once compre- 
hended will seem to him the only possible, as well as 
by far the noblest, conception of the fundamental 
nature of art. 

As to the quality of poetic expression, Mr. Stedman 
finds nothing to add to Milton's well-known dictum, 
that it should be simple, sensuous, passionate, — that 
is to say, impassioned, marked by intensity of emotion. 
Human passion has always been and probably always 
will be the theme of poets of the first order, " In 
truth," says our author, " the potent artist, the great 
Poetic expres- po^t, is hc wlio makcs US realize the emo- 
sion defined, ^ious of those who cxpcrieuce august 
extremes of fortune. For what can be of more value 
than intense and memorable sensations? What else 
make up that history which alone is worth the name 
of life?" The most effective expression, however, is 
not always the fullest expression in words ; Browning 
has shown that the most dramatic effects are produced 
by the indication of suppressed passion. The poet 
no more than the actor should " tear a passion to 
tatters " if he wishes to reach the summit of his art. 

The poet, Mr, Stedman holds in conclusion, is not 
merely a creator, but a prophet. His is a vision not 
enjoyed by ordinary mortals, and on him is laid the 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 2$ 

compulsion to declare it. It is required of him, there- 
fore, that he believe in his prophecy as something 
greater than himself. His office is incompatible with 
the scepticism that questions whether anything is 
certain, whether anything is really worth while. 
Neither a cynic nor a pessimist can be a great poet, 
for the underlying motive of all strenuous effort and 
high achievement is faith. Without such faith, become 
vital in action, the highest flight of poetry will not be 
essayed, or will be essayed in vain. 

To sum up the results of our examination of his 
work, we may say that Mr. Stedman seems a clear 
case of arrested development, — a man whom hard 
fate has bereft of his highest achievement. Poetry is 
his native speech. Herein he differs from Mr. Howells, 
who, though the writer of very creditable verse, yet 
finds in prose his more natural utterance. An artist in 

•1. /r o 1 1 11 1 1 r- verse, not in 

Mr. btedman hardly ranks among the first prose. 
American writers of prose. We are now considering 
his style only, — the mere form of his expression, the 
dress of his thought. His prose writings are of high 
value, but it is a value that does not depend chiefly 
on their workmanship. The substance is sterling, 
and bears the hall-mark of genuine worth ; the form 
is conventionally correct, but lacks the unmistakable 
stamp of genius. He is, in other words, not the artist 
in prose that he is in verse. His style has no serious 
faults, but it lacks flavor, sparkle, distinction. His 
words do not, " like so many nimble and airy servitors, 



26 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

trip about him at command." Now almost the con- 
trary, in every particular, may be said of his verse. 
While he does not rank, by virtue of what he has ac- 
tually done, with the greatest of our American poets, 
his verse has a distinct flavor that one would not like 
to lose. His work, except in that which we may call 
his juvenile period, could not possibly be mistaken 
for the work of any other poet. Much of it is not 
merely free from technical faults, but is imaginative, 
tender, spirited. It shows genius, and it contains the 
prophecy of greater things to be achieved. The un- 
fulfilment of that prophecy will be a serious loss to 
American letters. Mr. Stedman's place, nevertheless, 
among American authors can never be anything but 
a high one. Though his achievement in verse has not 
yet fulfilled the bright promise of his youth, though 
His place in his mind is not so opulent or his style so 

American 

literature. luxuriant as Lowell's, though he lacks the 
effervescing wit of Holmes, his actual performance is 
valuable for its cosmopolitan spirit, its broad culture, 
its genuine humor, its depth of insight, its conscien- 
tious workmanship. 



II. 

FRANCIS PARKMAN. 

AMONG American men of letters, none have a 
higher rank than the historians. Irving, Pres- 
cott, and Motley are names that are not eclipsed by 
those of Gibbon, Hume, and Macaulay. If Bancroft 
is not ranked with these, it is not because his labored 
work is inferior in scholarly research, but because the 
style, now dry and operose, now turgid and bombastic, 
puts it distinctly among historical writings of the 
second class. But there can be no doubt of the right 
of a fourth American to rank in this company of great 
historians. By the unanimous suffrages of competent 
critics, as well as of delighted readers, this honor has 
been awarded to Francis Parkman. 



Like Lowell and Holmes, Mr. Parkman belonged 
to the Brahmin caste of New England. Three genera- 
tions of ministers were among his ancestors. His 
father was a pupil of Channing, president of the asso- 
ciation of Unitarian ministers, founder of the chair of 
pulpit eloquence in the theological department of 
Harvard University, a divine of high repute in his day 



AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



for learning, eloquence, and character. It was a 
<-vr.u D u ■ brother of this divine (also a Dr. Parkman, 

Of the Brahmin ^ ' 

caste. ]^y^ Doctor of Medicinc, not of Divinity) 

who was murdered by his friend, Professor Webster 
— one of the most celebrated cases in the history of 
American criminal jurisprudence. Francis Parkman 
was born in Boston, September i6, 1823, predestined 
to the intellectual life. He was graduated at Harvard 
in 1844, ^"d for two years thereafter studied law, but 
finally abandoned the idea of a professional career. 
It does not appear that during his boyhood or his 
college days he had shown any strong bent towards 
literature. There are singularly few anecdotes or 
reminiscences of friends accessible, and the side-lights 
that such things often throw on a man's life and work 
are quite lacking in his case. One cannot discover 
what turned him toward the Great West and decided 
his future ; we only know that in 1846 he set out to 
explore the Rocky Mountains, and that he lived for 
some months among the Dakota Indians and even 
wilder tribes, gaining in this way such an intimate 
knowledge of aboriginal customs and traditions as few 
white men have ever obtained. If it was health that 
he sought, this incursion into the wilderness was an 
utter failure. The privations that he was compelled 
to endure sent him back to civilization with a shattered 
frame, and induced an affection of the eyes that would 
have ended the literary career of any ordinary man. 

The results of this exploration were first given to 
the'world in a series of articles in " Knickerbocker's 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 29 

Magazine," and at their conclusion were published in 
a volume called " Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life " 
(New York, 1849), which title was afterwards changed 
into " The California and Oregon Trail," by which 
name the book has long been known. It is even now 
delightful reading, and one can faintly imag- -p,,g ^^^^^ 
ine its fascination for a generation to whom ^^^^'' 
the Great West was a region full of mystery and ro- 
mance. The book was a success in every way, being 
praised by the critics and proving profitable to the 
publisher. This decided the author's career, if there 
was anything left to be decided. It was Mr. Parkman's 
evident vocation to be a historian, though the state of 
his health raised a doubt of his ability to follow the call. 
The field of his labors was also pretty definitely de- 
limited by this first success : it was to be the story of 
the Indian nations, in their relation to their white 
conquerors, the English and the French ; and this 
naturally led up to the story of the contest between 
France and England for the supremacy in North 
America. 

In a steady series the books came from the press, 
with such breaks only as thorough work required. In 
185 1 "The Conspiracy of Pontiac " was published, 
the failure of this conspiracy marking the downfall oi 
the power of the Six Nations. "Pioneers of France 
in the New World" followed in 1861;; ,,. ,.. . 

-' His histories. 

"The Jesuits in North America" in 1867; 

" La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West " in 

1869; "The Old Regime in Canada" in 1874; 



30 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

"Count Frontenac and New France" in 1877; 
"Montcalm and Wolfe" in 1884; and the series was 
concluded in 1892 with " A Half Century of Con- 
flict." These works fill twelve goodly octavos of some 
four hundred pages each, and constitute one of the 
notable contributions to historical literature made 
during the nineteenth century. The bulk of this 
writing proclaims Mr. Parkman to be one of the most 
industrious of historians, for it is fully equal to the 
great work of Gibbon, and is about twice that of the 
histories of Macaulay or Hume. But the mere bulk 
of his writing is its least remarkable feature ; that 
establishes his industry only, and Mr, Parkman was 
a man of genius. 

II. 

By what process of reasoning do we justify the 
custom of calling " self-made " him alone who rises 
to eminence from poverty? The fact, of course, is 
that any man is self-made who is ever made at all. 
Wealth and social position may supply the opportunity 
of greatness, but they never yet made a man great. 
It is a fair matter of debate, indeed, whether wealth 
The obstacles ^^^ social distinction are not distinctly un- 
of wealth. favorablc to the development of any germ 
of greatness with which a man may have the good 
fortune to be endowed by nature. There is something 
wholesome and bracing in poverty. No great race 
has ever been produced in an enervating tropical 
climate; the manly virtues flourish in rapidly increas- 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 3 1 

ing ratio as we journey away from the equator. The 
youth who is born with a golden spoon in his mouth 
and is lapped in luxury from his cradle onward, has 
not half a chance to make a man of himself If he 
turns out a tolerably decent fellow and does a man's 
work in the world, he has great reason to congratulate 
himself; while if he proves to be a man of genius and 
makes all mankind his debtors, something very like a 
miracle has been wrought. We do well to honor those 
who have overcome the obstacles of poverty and 
deficient early training, but let us honor even more 
those who have conquered the temptations of wealth 
and the flatteries of society. 

Mr. Parkman inherited an ample fortune, and a 
place in the most cultured and refined circle of Boston 
was his birthright. He might, without losing the 
respect of his class, have devoted himself to a life of 
elegant ease and learned leisure. He might have 
cultivated any one or all of several gentlemanly and 
costly tastes. He might have become a bibliomaniac, 
wise in first editions and fine bindings, or a virtuoso 
in violins and vases. He might, equally without re- 
proach, have devoted himself to yachting, coaching, 
or some other of the methods by which the gilded 
youth of America relieve themselves of their super- 
fluous dollars and kill the time that hangs so heavily 
on their well-manicured hands. He might „ . , . 

o His abundant 

even have become a mere idler, a bon vivant, '^''°'■^• 
whom everybody calls " a good fellow," — the type of 
man who is envied by fools and despised by the wise 



32 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Nay, he might have gone to the devil altogether, by 
the old-fashioned broad road well-travelled of rich 
young men. He did none of these things. Neither 
undervaluing nor overvaluing the advantages of wealth 
and station, he made them the stepping-stones of his 
career. He labored with a zeal, an industry, an un- 
flagging purpose, not surpassed by men who have to 
pull hard against wind and tide to get on in life. No 
mechanic toiling for daily bread has been a harder 
worker than he. Whether ambition or philanthropy 
was the spur that urged him on, — and there is no 
need that we should inquire too curiously, — the spur 
was at any rate efTective. 

It is conceded on all hands that Mr Parkman's 
histories are a contribution of the highest value to our 
knowledge of early American history. They could 
not well fail to be this, inasmuch as they traverse a 
field practically untrodden, and are based on original 
Originality. sources. Fcw rcadcrs realize the labor 
involved in blazing a way through a virgin forest of 
facts. But Mr. Parkman has done more than blaze 
a way; he has cleared the forest and brought the land 
under cultivation. In other words, he has done his 
work with such thoroughness and minuteness of re- 
search, and with such impartiality and accuracy of 
judgment, that it will not require doing over again for 
many years to come, if ever, His search has not 
passed by any material of value known to exist; all 
the ore in sight has been mined and the veins are ex- 
hausted. Until new discoveries are made, little of 
value remains to be done. 



PRANCIS PARKMAN. 33 

This has involved an immense deal of travel and 
research at first hand ; it has compelled no end of 
mousing about for hidden and unsuspected sources 
of knowledge ; it prompted numerous visits to France, 
where the State archives were thrown open to Mr. 
Parkman's inspection, and their secrets were wrung 
from them by patient investigation. There was a 
conscientious thoroughness in this historian's research 
that would have won men's praise if he had been as 
robust a man as Macaulay, for example. But this 
indefatigable worker was not a robust man ; jjj^ extensive 
most of his life was passed in a state of '■^^^=*'*=^^^- 
health but one degree removed from invalidism. 
For the greater part of his work he was able to use 
his own eyes very little ; and months at a time he 
was compelled to spend in a darkened room, in 
imminent danger of total blindness. Most of his 
research he was compelled to prosecute by the aid 
of other eyes than his own, and his books were for 
the most part composed by dictation. Prescott, it 
is recorded, in the latter part of his life was afflicted 
in a similar way, and his brilliant " History of the 
Conquest of Mexico " was composed in like manner ; 
but Mr. Parkman worked by this method during a 
period of forty years. Both the extent and the 
excellence of his work would be remarkable in any 
case, but are nothing less than astounding in view of 
these circumstances. 

One could hardly mention a parallel case^ in the 
whole history of literature. We are accustomed to 

3 • 



34 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

think of the composition of " Paradise Lost" and the 
other great works that Milton produced in his years 
A feat without ^^ blindncss, as an unexampled literary 
parallel. ^^^^^ ^^^ Miltou's task was not to be 

named beside Parkman's for difficulty. The com- 
position of an epic, being almost wholly an intel- 
lectual process, can be carried on by the help of an 
amanuensis with comparative ease. In historical 
writing the mere work of composition is the small- 
est part of the undertaking. To collect, compare, 
and sift the materials is an immense labor, even for 
one who has the full use of his eyes, but to depend 
on the eyes of others multiplies the difficulty im- 
measurably. Take a single instance : one who can 
use his own eyes readily acquires the faculty of run- 
ning his glance rapidly down the page, singling out 
the points of interest or value to him and passing by 
the rest ; while one who depends on another's eyes 
must listen patiently while every word is read to him, 
lest he miss something of consequence. In a thou- 
sand ways that imagination easily suggests, he is at 
a disadvantage, and the demands made on his time 
and patience by this method of working are not 
easily calculable. 

III. 

Whoever comes after Mr. Parkman can only retell 
the same story. It seems unlikely that any dis- 
coveries of material remain to be made that will 
throw important light on this period of history, 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 35 

though they may clear up some details and pos- 
sibly compel modifications of judgment here and 
there. The substance of the story will remain un- 
changed. Can any future historian hope to tell it 
better than Mr. Parkman? Who has ever had the 
courage to retell Gibbon's story of the decline and 
fall of the Roman Empire? Much as has 
been said, and deservedly said, of Mr. 
Parkman's industry in research, even more may be 
said, and with no less justice, of his brilliancy of 
style. Perhaps "brilliant" is not the happiest epi- 
thet one could choose, for it may convey to some 
an implication that the style is unfavorable to strict 
veracity. Of more than one great historian it has 
been said, with at least a show of justice, that his 
style is one in which no man could possibly tell the 
truth. The historian who affects the grand manner, 
who makes much use of antithesis and metaphor, 
who overloads his pages with allusion and quota- 
tion, — a historian, in a word, who is chiefly a rhet- 
orician, — is morally certain to be untrustworthy in 
details. The desire to make an effective sentence 
will, unconsciously to himself, often prove superior 
to the desire to tell the truth. Mr. Froude stands a 
melancholy example for all time of this principle. 
Mr. Parkman's brilliancy is not rhetorical, in the 
conventional sense of that term ; that is, he does not 
produce his effects by the free use of the artifices 
and ornaments of style described and illustrated at 
length in the standard treatises on rhetoric. 



36 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

If Mr. Parkman had been a novelist he would be 
classed as a realist, for he has carried the realistic 
method into history as no other man of our time has 
done it. Picturesqueness is a striking feature of his 
style ; his descriptions do not impress one as beauti- 
ful, though they are that, but as vivid, and, above all, 
as truthful. This is precisely what they are. The 
historian has made his sketch on the spot and from 
nature, precisely as a painter would do it, and with 
the same fidelity to detail that a painter would study. 
A similar method and effect are discernible in all 
his descriptions of character. Not only 

Picturesqueness. ■ 

are the great personages in his pages — 
Pontiac and La Salle, Montcalm and Wolfe — drawn 
with wonderful clearness and actually made to live 
and move before us, but most of the men who re- 
ceive more than a passing mention are sketched with 
equal fidelity and effectiveness. As the skilled artist, 
by a few strokes of the crayon, catches and repro- 
duces the expression of a face with a power that an 
elaborate oil portrait often fails to equal, so by a 
phrase or a sentence interjected here and there into 
his narrative Mr. Parkman has outlined the character 
of scores of men, and we know them better than 
through pages of description by most writers. 

When the " Saturday Review " praises anything 
American, we are warranted in concluding that it 
must be very good indeed. The " Saturday Review " 
concedes that the writings of Mr. Parkman are certain 
of a permanent place among the most important his- 



FRANCIS PAR KM AN. 37 

torical literature of our age. And it bases its pre 
diction, not on the industry and accuracy of the his- 
torian, but on the excellence of the style. Recognition 
It recognizes in him a great artist, as well 
as a diligent scholar, one who had the instinct of 
selection, the sense of perspective, the gift of co- 
ordinating and grouping materials, — in short, the 
creative power that out of a chaos of facts evolves 
the cosmos that men call a great historical work. 
We may pardon the tone of condescension, and even 
of surprise, in which it is admitted that some good 
thing does occasionally come out of America, in 
view of the substantial justice of the verdict. Mr. 
Parkman's laurels were thus awarded by that con- 
temporaneous posterity, a foreign nation. 



IV. 



It should not be inferred from anything that has 
been said of Mr. Parkman's methods of work that he 
was through life a cloistered recluse. On the con- 
trary, he was a man of the world quite as much as a 
man of letters. His books alone would warrant the 
inference that he knew men, that he studied them 
closely and at first hand, with careful observation of 
their character and motives. This could never be 
done by one who shut himself up with books and 
musty manuscripts. Gibbon has told us, in a some- 
what celebrated passage, of the help he derived from 



38 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

his service in the mihtia: " The discipline and evolu- 
tions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion 
of the phalanx and the legion: and the 

Man of the ^ o ' 

world. captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the 

reader may smile) has not been useless to the his- 
torian of the Roman Empire." It was no less ad- 
vantageous to Mr. Parkman to improve his social 
opportunities. He was always a favorite in Boston 
society, where his talk was held to be quite as bril- 
liant as his writing. He was also what Dr. Johnson 
would have termed an eminently " clubbable " man, 
and for a series of years was president of the far- 
famed St. Botolph's Club. For many years he was 
one of the seven corporators of Harvard University^ 
and gave much of his time and thought to the affairs 
of that institution. By thus keeping in touch with 
his fellows and his age, he avoided that scholarly 
aloofness from practical affairs which gives an air of 
unreality to the work of so many men of letters. 

Mr. Parkman was, in fact, one of the few Ameri- 
cans who know how to play as well as how to work. 
Play — by which one means, of course, any innocent 
amusement, any exercise of the faculties of body or 
mind for recreation — has its place in a true phi- 
losophy of life, not as a thing permissible 

His play. . 

merely, but as a duty. It is no more to 
be disregarded than sleep or the taking of food. It 
is a thing of which no man need be ashamed, or for 
which he should apologize. It may be made a vice, 
just as eating may become gluttony, but play is no 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 



^9 



more dissipation than rest is laziness. Most adult 
Americans do not know how to play, and when they 
take recreation do it in a secret or half shame- 
faced way. Our men and women are ranging them- 
selves in two classes, — those who never play and 
those who never do anything else. It is hard to 
choose between the incorrigible idler who lives only 
for pleasure and the incorrigible worker who lives 
only for his business or profession. It is a wise 
public sentiment that insists on every man's working 
even if he has inherited wealth, but society should 
add to its law an edict that all men should play also. 
Those who live long and accomplish much are for 
the most part men who know how to play. Glad- 
stone is a famous chopper of trees, and Lord Palmer- 
ston rode to hounds up to his last years. 

It was, perhaps, fortunate for Mr. Parkman that his 
health compelled him to play, to seek some out-door 
recreation. He chose horticulture as the secondary 
business of his life, and as he could do nothing with- 
out doing it well, he became one of the Horticultural 
best amateur gardeners of our country, if, p"''^'^"^- 
indeed, he did not rather deserve to be called a pro- 
fessional. He labored with his own hands at the art, 
as anybody must who really loves it, no matter how 
rich he may be, but he also employed his purse 
liberally in the gratification of what came to be with 
him a hobby. His residence was surrounded by 
ample grounds, and in these he had a notable col- 



40 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

lection of rare and beautiful trees, shrubs, and plants. 
He was particularly successful in the culture of aquatic 
plants, and it was largely through his intelligent 
enthusiasm that amateur gardening has been made 
a favorite by-pursuit of professional and business 
men. 

It is hardly correct to call Mr. Parkman an amateur 
gardener, as has already been hinted, though he was 
never a " professional " in the usual sense of that 
term, which commonly defines one who is a gar- 
dener for revenue only, or mainly. As is almost 
inevitable in the case of one who handles pen and 
spade with equal skill, he made literary use of his 
His Book of horticultural experience, and his "Book 
Roses. ^^ Roses," published in 1866, was highly 

esteemed among all rosarians, amateur and profes- 
sional. In 1 87 1 Mr. Parkman was elected professor 
of horticulture in the agricultural school of Plarvard, 
and filled the chair with eminent ability for two 
years. Had his health permitted him a longer di- 
version from the chief work of his life, he would, 
doubtless, have remained in a position to which his 
love for the subject would have attracted him so 
strongly. He was right, however, not to let his play 
become his work. 

At one time it seemed likely that the historian 
would allow himself another diversion, by making 
occasional excursions into fiction. In 1856 he pub- 
lished a novel called " Vassall Morton," about which 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 4 1 

one can learn little more than the name, the date of 
publication, and the fact that the scene of the story- 
is partly in America and partly in Europe. One 
may, perhaps, infer, without more accurate infor- 
mation, that the book was not more than 

His one novel. 

moderately successful. This was, all things 
considered, a fortunate circumstance, as a marked 
success might have diverted the author's attention 
from the work that he has accomplished. Some 
fragments of his earlier composition suggest that 
Macaulay, had he chosen to devote himself to fiction, 
might have made a name as great as that of Scott; 
but who would exchange his history for a shelf-full 
of romances? And on the other hand, who would 
exchange the Waverley novels for a shelf-full of his- 
tories? It is well in each case that the shoemaker 
stuck to his last, — that the writer faithfully, and even 
doggedly, continued to do the kind of work for which, 
on the whole, he was best fitted. 

Long before his death, we ceased to say of Mr. 
Parkman that his best work was probably to come. 
On the contrary, the reasonable forecast in his case 
seemed to be that his work was substantially done. 
The plan of his history was completed, and it was 
not likely that he would attempt another enterprise. 
We looked upon him as one entitled to spend the 
remainder of his days in peace, enjoying the pleas- 
ures of society and of nature, honored by all who can 
appreciate patient labor, broad scholarship, historic 



42 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



insight, and a style that ilhistrates the sparkle, the 
richness, and the melody of the English tongue. 
And when he died, though we felt his loss as almost 
that of a personal friend, we felt a serene conscious- 
ness that his name is securely enrolled among the 
immortals. 



III. 

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 

ONE may easily doubt, though he be never so 
ardent an advocate of classical study, whether 
a knowledge of Greek and Latin literature is any 
essential part of the equipment of a successful man 
of letters. From the great dramatist who had 
"small Latin and less Greek " to the latest maga- 
zine scribbler, a cloud of witnesses rise up in pro- 
test against the idea that college training „, 

o o o 1 he university 

tends to make a man a great writer, o^ authors. 
Only a graduate of the university of the world has 
the learning required to become a great poet or a 
great novelist, and a diploma from any other insti- 
tution makes no man free of the company of great 

authors. 

" My only books 
Were woman's looks, 
And folly 's all they 've taught me," 

could be said sincerely only by an incorrigible fool. 
It is in volumes of this kind — in the keen and con- 
stant observation of life, that is to say — that even 
genius must find its materials, if it is to touch men 
and move them. Among the most successful of 
American authors, whether we measure success by 
immediate popularity or by substantial achieve- 



44 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

ment, are striking instances of what, in other call- 
ings, we are accustomed to call "self-made men," 
— men who have risen to eminence without that 
training in the schools generally regarded as indis- 
pensable. There is probably no more impressive 
case of this sort than that of Mr. Howells, 



I. 

It is a great thing to be well-born, and an almost 
greater thing to be well-bred; happy indeed the 
A well-born ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ both. The Howclls family, 
'^'^- before coming to this country, were 

Welsh Quakers, but they show as far back as their 
history can be traced an exceptional independence 
of sectarian bias. The grandfather of the novelist 
was a Methodist, his father was a Swedenborgian, 
and Mr. Howells himself would probably be not 
unjustly described as a Unitarian. The inheri- 
tance of such a tendency to hold lightly denomi- 
national bonds, while it would be very unfortunate 
for a theologian, might be regarded as a happy 
circumstance in the case of one whose calling pecu- 
liarly demands the widest and most sympathetic 
knowledge of men. There is a place in the world 
for ardent sectaries, — nobody who is not a bigot to 
liberality will question that; but their place is not 
in the ranks of dramatists or novelists. 

The father of our novelist was a man of more than 
ordinary culture. A printer by trade and an editor 



WILLIAM DEAN IIOWELLS. 45 

in a small way, he had made quite a large collec- 
tion of books for his time and for a back-country 
town. Of the mother we can learn little, but that 
little indicates a woman of gentle manners and 
refined tastes. Into such a family a boy was born 
March i, 1837, the parents then living at Martin's 
Ferry, Ohio. Young Howells had the usual educa- 
tion that a boy gets in a country town; beyond the 
"three R's" it could not reasonably be expected 
to go. What sort of a boy he was, and what he 
learned that books could not teach, he , „ , 

' A Boy's 

has himself told us in "A Boy's Town." "^own. 
This book is the best autobiography of a boy in 
existence, far less introspective and therefore more 
truthful than Daudet's " Le Petit Chose," in which 
the French novelist has told the story of his boy- 
hood pathetically enough, but with too much im- 
agination to make it satisfactory as biography, 
however one may admire it as literature. 

What such a boy would learn at school would 
necessarily be the least part of his education. He 
took to reading as naturally as a duck takes to 
water. His father's library contained a larger 
proportion of poetry than is common in such col- 
lections, and this fact probably had much to do 
with shaping the first literary ideas of the lad. 
Like Pope, he "lisped in numbers for the ^ 

^ ^ Juvenile 

numbers came;" or, to state the fact more verse-maWng. 
prosaically, while still a small boy he began to 
make verses, and set them in type himself, in his 



46 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

father's printing-office. It does not appear whether 
the verses found their way into the newspaper then 
published by his father, but very likely some of 
them did. 

The family fortunes were not uniformly good, 
country journalism being an even more uncertain 
venture then than now. In 185 1 there came a 
crash. The family took the matter with charac- 
teristic philosophy. Mr. Howells says that when 
the failure was assured, "we all went down to the 
river and went in swimming." Young Howells 
then went to work, contributing his earnings — four 
dollars a week, as compositor on the Ohio " State 
Journal" — to the family purse. Things mended 
not long after, and at nineteen he was graduated 
from the composing room into journalism. Begin- 
ning as an employe of the Cincinnati "Gazette," 
. . ,. * . at twenty-two he became news editor of 

A journalist at -j 

nineteen. ^j^g Colum bus "State Journal," and at 
about the same time began his purely literary 
career. He did not immediately find his real 
vocation, for a time imagining himself called to 
be a poet. His first publication was "Poems of 
Two Friends" (Columbus, i860), which he issued 
jointly with John J. Piatt, whose acquaintance had 
somehow been made during the brief journalistic 
experience just described. At about this time the 
young poet became a contributor to the " Atlantic 
Monthly, " then recently founded and on the look- 
out for new writers of promise. 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 47 

In the same year that saw the appearance of this 
volume of poems Mr. Howells wrote a campaign 
biography of Abraham Lincoln that did ^j^^j^;^ ^^ j^^^ 
admirable service. Except in the West, ofLmcoin. 
Lincoln was, at the time of his nomination, com- 
paratively unknown to his own party; and when 
the news was flashed along the wires the general 
exclamation was, "Who is Abe Lincoln.''" This 
book did much to make the candidate known, and 
it furnished newspaper editors and campaign orators 
plenty of material for the answering of all questions 
regarding the party's candidate. For this service 
the biographer received one hundred and sixty 
dollars, and later on, in accordance with time- 
honored custom, there was added an appointment 
from President Lincoln as consul at Venice. 

The use made of both rewards was characteristic. 
The money was expended upon a trip to Boston 
via Montreal, — a route which Mr. Howells turned 
to excellent account afterwards in "Their Wedding 
Journey." This was a red-letter date in the bud- 
ding author's history, for on this visit he made 
the personal acquaintance of Lowell, Holmes, and 
others whom he had previously known only by 
reputation or through correspondence. One will 
not go far astray in regarding this visit as having 
determined the course of his life thereafter. The 
consulship at Venice was likewise made consul at 
to contribute to the broadening of knowl- ^^""=^- 
edge and sympathies, — every forward step that the 



48 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

young author gained becoming the vantage-ground 
for a still further advance. If the spoils system in 
our diplomatic service produced more frequently 
such results as these, one could look upon it with 
a greater degree of toleration. But- the pocket 
boroughs were not saved in England by the fact 
that Macaulay and Burke owed to them their first 
seats in Parliament; and the appointment of Haw- 
thorne and Howells to discharge political debts 
cannot save the spoils system. 

The years from 1861 to 1865 were spent in 
acquiring the Italian language, in study of the 
national literature, and in travel. No complaint 
was ever made that the consul failed to perform 
his duty in Venice satisfactorily, but he certainly 
found time to extend his education vastly in these 
Venetian Life four ycars. His " Venetian Life " (Lon- 

and Italian 

Journeys. clou and Ncw York, 1866) and "Italian 

Journeys" (Boston, 1867) were the first-fruits of 
this residence abroad. Two more delightful and 
instructive books about Italy have never been pub- 
lished, and they still deservedly find a host of 
appreciative readers. We may not improbably 
ascribe to this foreign residence and travel a cer- 
tain cosmopolitan spirit, a breadth of "atmosphere," 
as painters say, that is characteristic of the work 
of later years. 

On returning to this country in 1866, Mr. 
Howells was for a time a writer for the " New 
York Tribune" and the "Nation," but was soon 



WILLIAM DEAN HOWE LIS. 49 

offered the post of assistant editor of the "Atlan- 
tic Monthly" by James T. Fields, and in 1872 be- 
came editor of that magazine. In this po- Ejuorof the 
sition he served with complete acceptance ^^'antic. 
and success, until his resignation in 1881 in order 
to devote himself more completely to original liter- 
ary work. In many respects he made a model 
magazine editor. He was painstaking, enterpris- 
ing, courteous, and firm. 

He did not forget, in his sympathy with the 
writer struggling for a hearing, that the patrons 
of the magazine had a prior right to the best liter- 
ature to be got, whether in prose or verse. With- 
out breaking with past tradition, he introduced 
fresh features and infused new life and spirit into 
every department of the magazine. In spite of 
the contempt he may even then have felt and has 
since expressed for critics and criticism, he made 
the critical work of "The Atlantic" a force in 
current literature. He established the " Contrib- 
utors' Club," — a sort of free parliament for the 
expression of opinion on a wide range of topics 
by some of the cleverest of American writers. In 
a word, if he had not preferred to be the repre- 
sentative American novelist of his dav, he mifirht 
have become its representative editor. He has all 
the gifts of a great journalist, except, perhaps, lack 
of conscientious scruple. With long and patient 
effort — who knows .'' — he might have acquired 
even that. 

4 



50 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



II. 



With the publication of "Their Wedding Jour- 
ney" in 1871, Mr. Howells entered on his real 
Their Wed- Career. Hitherto he had been experi- 
diug Journey, nicnting, now he had found his vocation. 
One cannot treat his poems as anything better 
than the exercises of a clever lad, or the amuse- 
ments of a versatile man of letters. His critical 
work is a by-product, a collection of chips from 
the workshop of a busy writer. From this time 
on we have to do with a man who is first of all and 
last of all a novelist. Novel after novel has made 
its appearance, with the unfailing regularity of the 
seasons. Yet this fecundity has not been reached 
at the expense of quality. None of his books bears 
marks of undue haste, of careless workmanship, of 
failing powers. On the contrary, if each book 
published has not surpassed all its predecessors, 
we can trace in the author from year to year an 
increase of power, a completer mastery of the re- 
sources of his art, a larger view, an ampler spirit. 
One has heard and read that of late years a change 
has come over Mr. Howells, — that the romance of 
his earlier books has faded away into a hard, dry, 
Hisaiiegediater^^^^i^'^' ^^at hc has lost thc joyousncss 
pessimism. ^^ youth and has become pessimistic, not 
to say cynical. This seems an opinion founded on a 
partial and superficial knowledge of Mr. Howells's 



WILLIAM DEAN HOVVELLS. 51 

writings. There is nothing more romantic or 
idyllic in the Marches when we first meet them 
on "Their Wedding Journey" than when after a 
score of years we renew their acquaintance in "A 
Hazard of New Fortunes." Such change as is to 
be noted in his later books is due rather to the 
influence of the much -admired Tolstoi than to any 
other cause. "The World of Chance" is quite 
strongly tinged with the Russian novelist's views 
of society and religion. It cannot be said, how- 
ever, that much of the light of hope is thrown on 
the regeneration of society by a book in which one 
would-be regenerator becomes a maniac, and com- 
mits suicide after unsuccessfully attempting murder, 
while another dies without having accomplished the 
great purpose of his life, the publication of a book 
that was to be the gospel of a new era. 

III. 

Even a casual reader of these books is soon aware 
that their author is no mere story-teller, content 
just to amuse the public, regarding their smiling 
approval as the be-all and end-all of his obligation. 
He is a thoroughly instructed artist, who works not 
at haphazard, who succeeds not by lucky strokes of 
genius, but proceeds according to a well-defined 
theory of his art, — a theory that we must take pains 
to understand if we would judge him fairly and 
sympathetically. We may dissent from the theory. 



52 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

we may find the practice faulty; what we may not 
do is to judge him in the empirical and a priori 
fashion so common in current criticism. 

Both in theory and in practice, Mr. Howells is 
a realist. He believes, that is to say, that the 
„ ,, chief end of the novel is not to tell a 

Howells a 

realist. story, but to represent life. A story 

there must be, of course, but not necessarily a 
plot; the history of the spiritual development of a 
single personage, for example, is a "story." The 
novel must tell a story in the sense that a picture 
tells a story, and in no other sense; in other 
words, whatever represents a bit of life necessarily 
tells a story. This fundamental canon requires 
no debate, for it is not merely truth but truism, 
or nearly so. Like Captain Cuttle's observation, 
the bearings of it lie in its application, and it 
is when Mr. Howells begins to apply his canon, 
whether in his own practice or in criticism of 
others, that doubts begin to suggest themselves. 

Art is necessarily selective, for the sufficient 
reason that no man can represent the whole of 
life. It is only a scrap of landscape that the 
painter can put on his largest canvas, and only a 
glimpse of some tiny segment of the social cosmos 
(or shall we say chaos .-•) can be afforded the readers 
of a three-volume novel. This being the case, the 
question immediately arises whether some principle 
or principles should not govern the selection of 
what is to be represented. There are professors 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 53 

of realism in fiction who teach that all possible 
objects arc equally worthy of representation. They 
do not really believe this, because even they prac- 
tise selection, and therefore, of course, re- „ 

' ' ^ i rue realism 

jection; but, as children say, they "make ^nd false, 
believe " believe it when they are challenged. 
Nay, they virtually affirm that the more worthless 
and commonplace, the more hideous and repulsive 
and vile an object is, the more worthy it is of 
representation. 

Now this application of the canon of realism one 
is certainly entitled to dispute without thereby 
incurring suspicion of questioning the canon itself. 
All art has taken it for granted, from its rudest 
beginnings until now, that some objects in nature, 
some experiences in life, are better adapted for 
representation than others. The choice of object 
has been dictated, in the main, by its capacity to 
please. Without disputing the fact that there is 
a place in art for the grotesque, for the painful 
even, its chief function is to please and ennoble. 
The great artists have always appealed to the moral 
as well as to the aesthetic faculties. One is not 
convinced, therefore, by any assertions or examples 
of realists in fiction, that the trivial and the vile 
furnish proper subjects for the artist. To the 
healthy mind they give no pleasure; they inspire 
only emttd or disgust. 

Mr. Howells cannot be too promptly acquitted of 
any suspicion of choosing the vile as subject of his 



54 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

art. His one villain, Bradley Hubbard, is so ill 
done, in comparison with his other work, as to 
suggest lack of knowledge of this type. The bad 
woman he has never attempted to draw, though 
American society is not quite guiltless of Becky 
Sharps. But the trivial, the commonplace, he has 
exhibited in season and out, especially in his repre- 
The gospel of scntations of American women. That, 

trivial common- , . , 

place. however, mtroduces a subject so large as 

to demand discussion by itself. Passing it by for 
the present, it is pertinent to inquire. Can it be 
that Mr. Howells gives us in his books a fair 
representation of life as he has known it } Has 
his whole experience been of this stale, flat, un- 
profitable sort .'' Has he never known anybody who 
had a soul above buttons.-' The thing seems diffi- 
cult to believe. It may be that the people we meet 
in his novels are those with whom he is most 
familiar, those that he feels himself most com- 
petent to depict, but that they exhaust his experi- 
ence of life and his knowledge of the world one 
cannot so easily accept. 

Let us be just, however. To Mr. Howells we 
must award the praise of having done well what he 
set out to do. Given the propriety of the choice, we 
must grant that he has made a faithful and lifelike 
picture of the thing chosen. It is with the choice 
itself that many of his readers quarrel ; or, perhaps 
one should say, they quarrel with his persistent 
and exclusive choice of one type of character and 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 55 

one sort of experience for representation in his 
fiction. Whether he has not known higher types 
of character among us, or has lacked courage to 
attempt their portraiture — in either case he has 
chosen badly for his readers, though possibly pru- 
dently for himself. 

IV. 

No examination of the works of Mr. Howells 
would have any claim to comprehensiveness that 
failed to take account of his farce-come- ™ . 

The farce- 
dies. There is quite a series of these, '^o^edies. 

beginning with "The Sleeping-Car" and ending 
with the "Unexpected Guests." No American 
author has given us more admirable fooling than 
this, at once clever and refined. The humor is 
free from that element of exaggeration supposed to 
be peculiarly characteristic of American humor. 
The humor of Mr. Howells is as well-bred and 
studiously proper as the elegant Bostonians who 
are his dramatis personce ; it is humor in a swallow- 
tail coat and white-lawn tie, so to say. Those 
dramatis personcB deserve a separate word: they are 
but four, — the real characters, that is to say, though 
make-weights may occasionally be introduced, — but 
they have been ingeniously utilized, year after year, 
in new situations, until they seem to us people 
whom we have known all our lives. The same 
idea has been almost simultaneously worked out 



56 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

by several clever writers of short stories ; ^ but none 
of his rivals has succeeded like Mr. Howells in 
making his people real flesh-and-blood persons. 

These comedies bring us again face to face with 
the chief grievance one has against Mr. Howells, 
and it is time to have it fairly out with him, — that 
The caricature is, his curiously and indeed exasperat- 

of American 

womanhood, iugly inadequate portraiture of American 
womanhood. This is more or less a fault of all 
his writing, but it becomes most conspicuous in 
these farces. Are Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Campbell 
fair types of American womanhood .-* Is the Ameri- 
can woman who is both well-bred and well-read 
usually only one remove from idiocy.'* Is she 
habitually so silly and flighty as to suggest that 
her proper place is in some institution for the 
feeble-minded.'' One does not dispute that the 
originals of Mesdames Roberts and Campbell exist 
— unfortunately, one has met them ; one only 
pities the man who has been so unspeakably unfor- 
tunate as to meet nobody else. The plea that they 
exist is not a valid defence to our accusation, — 
Nana and Madame Bovary and Sappho exist also, 
without doubt; the charge being that there has 
been a failure in literary perspective, an artistic 
blunder of which even a demonstration of realistic 

1 Notably by Mr. Thomas A. Janvier in his " Color Studies " 
of artist life in New York, and by Mr. Richard Harding Davis 
in his portraiture of Van Bibber, the New York )oung man 
about town. 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 57 

truth furnishes no justification. Art is something 
different from and higher than photography. 

Mr. Howells is inclined to wave aside such 
criticism with a rather jaunty air, pronouncing it 
"extremely comical " as he does so. "I The author 

*' confesses 

once said," so he is reported as remark- and avoids." 
ing, '*to a lady who asked me, 'Why don't you 
give us a grand, noble, perfect woman } ' that I was 
waiting for the Almighty to begin. I think that 
women, as a rule, are better and nobler than men, 
but they are not perfect. I am extremely opposed 
to what are called ideal characters. I think their 
portrayal is mischievous; it is altogether offensive 
to me as an artist, and, as far as the morality goes 
I believe that when an artist tries to create an ideal 
he mixes some truth up with a vast deal of senti- 
mentality, and produces something that is extremely 
noxious as well as nauseous. I think that no man 
can consistently portray a probable type of human 
character without being useful to his readers. 
When he endeavors to create something higher 
than that, he plays the fool himself and tempts his 
readers to folly. He tempts young men and 
women to try to form themselves upon models 
that would be detestable in life, if they were ever 
found there." 

Mr. Howells makes the form of plea known to 
lawyers as "confession and avoidance." He admits 
that the women of his fictions are imperfect, but 
throws the responsibility on the Almighty, — ■ he 



58 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

has given us faithful portraits of the kind of women 
he has found in the world. The validity of this de- 
fence can be admitted only by those who find it cred- 
„, , , ible. His women, taken as a class, com- 

The plea not ' ' 

valid. prise more varieties of the species fooj 

than most of us have known by actual experience; 
but that he has never in his life, as son, husband, 
father, friend, come in contact with any other sort 
of woman than this mixture of superficial accom- 
plishments and frivolous mind, — this, as A. Ward 
feelingly remarked, is "2 mutch." The ideal 
heroine of fiction is not a creature as 

" beautiful as sweet, 
And young as beautiful, and soft as young, 
And gay as soft, and innocent as gay," 

and silly as all the rest put together, because this 
is not the best type of woman in real life. 

The plea of Mr. Howells must, therefore, be 
overruled; he cannot be absolved from the guilt of 
defective art by the plea that the art is perfect, and 
that the defect is in womankind. The plea contains 
as little of truth as of gallantry. And by saying 
this, one intends no impeachment of the novelist's 
sincerity. Mr. Howells takes himself and his art 
with great seriousness, and honestly believes in 
both with all his might. He is merely the victim 
of misplaced confidence in this instance. It were 
treason to American women to accept his lame 
and impotent conclusion that they are fit only to 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 59 

chronicle small beer. It were to believe the future 
of our country hopeless. 

" For she that out of Lethe scales with man 
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands, — 
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, 
How shall men grow ? " 

Justice requires the admission that Mr. Howells 
has shown signs of late of strengthening this weak 
place in his stories. It is always the unexpected 
that happens, and in his " World of ^^^ ^y^^.,^ 
Chance" he has at last given us a °^ Chance, 
heroine who is neither idiotic nor feeble-minded. 
One says "heroine," since that is the conventional 
term for the chief female character of a novel. In 
the strictest sense of the word. Peace Hughes is 
not a heroine at all ; she is something far better 
than that, a genuine woman. Her station is not 
exalted, her like may be found by anybody who 
takes a walk on Broadway, — her like in all outward 
characteristics, one means. Her father is a social- 
istic "crank," and she is a stenographer and type- 
writer in a publishers' office. Mr. Howells does 
not represent her as saying or doing a single heroic 
thing, — anything that surpasses the experience of 
a thousand young women in New York ; yet he has 
drawn her with so much sympathy, so much fidelity, 
as to make her the strongest and best woman in all 
his fictions. 



6o AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Mr. Howells deserves congratulations on his dis- 
covery of this type of woman. If he will continue 
to live in New York and to use his eyes he will 
. , discover other types not less womanly. 

A woman at J ^ J 

last. Ono, does not demand impossibilities of 

him in protesting against the inanities of his pre- 
vious books. Latter-day readers have no great 
liking for the angelic or the heroic type of woman 
that novelists used to give us. It is doubtless our 
misfortune, but most of us never yet have happened 
to meet either of those types. The women we have 
known were neither angels nor heroines, but just 
women. The greater part of them have not been 
fools. The realistic method of Mr. Howells shows 
to best advantage when, as in this book, he applies 
it to the delineation of a real woman, in no way 
exceptional, unless it be in a certain delicacy and 
nobleness of nature. For one cannot think so well 
of the world as to believe that women like Peace 
Hughes are common. 

V. 

If that country is most fortunate that has no 
annals, may we not count happiest that author of 
whose life there is little to record save the titles of 
his books .-' This is practically the case with Mr. 
Howells since 1881; but of these records there 
is a long series. No author has afforded us an 
example of systematic and industrious labor at his 
art more highly to be commended. It is something 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 6 1 

to have set before our young people who cherish 
literary aspirations, as on the whole the most pros- 
perous of American writers, a man who claims no 
peculiar exemptions from moral obligation on the 
score of genius, who is as regular at his desk as 
any blacksmith at his anvil, who is blameless in 
every private and public relation. Mr. Howells has 
found time, by virtue of this system and diligence, 
not only to produce a novel every year, but to do 
a considerable quantity of other literary jjoweiis's b 
work. Among these by-products, as they P''°d"cts. 
have already been called, may be specified the edit- 
ing, with critical introductions, of a series of vol- 
umes called " Choice Biographies " (8 vols. Boston, 
1877-8); the volume of critical essays on "Modern 
Italian Poets" (1887); and his papers contributed 
to the Editor's Study of "Harper's Magazine," 
the best of which have been collected in " Criticism 
and Fiction" (New York, 1891). 

It is not a little funny to read in these criticisms 
denunciations of critics, so fierce in matter, in 
phrases so urbane. One suspects that „. 

A J^ His quarrel 

Mr. Howells would like to be rude to the ^"^ the critics, 
critics if he only knew how, he labors so hard to 
say something cutting, something that will pierce 
the notoriously thick hide of this terrible wild 
beast. For your critic is essentially a devourer of 
authors, and can no more be credited with good in- 
tentions than a tiger. It is doing the critic unde- 
served honor, this comparing him to a tiger, for Mr. 



62 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Howells will allow him to be nothing higher in the 
scale of being than a parasite. "The critic exists," 
he tells us, " because the author first existed. If 
books failed to appear, the critic must disappear 
like the poor aphis or the lowly caterpillar in 
the absence of vegetation." This sort of thing, 
diluted through many pages, does less to convince 
the public than to convict the writer. Is it the 
galled jade that winces.'' Has the critic's lash 
been so vigorously wielded as to cause Mr. Howells 
pain commensurate with this retaliation.'' Be this 
as it may, he must be held to have a very defective 
conception of the critic's function. One is aston- 
ished, if he rate this function so low, that he is 
willing to enact the parasite himself. Shall one 
who proclaims from the housetops that the clown's 
part is unworthy of a man, presently don the motley 
and himself play the fool.'' 

The critic, rightly considered, is not a parasite 
but a middleman. His function in literature is as 
The critic's Valid and as useful as the merchant's in 

function legiti- c^^ , • ^ . ^ i i 

mate. commercc. bhort-sighted men have de- 

nounced the merchant as a parasite on the body 
politic, their ground being that he is not a producer 
and gains his living at the expense of those who 
add to the world's wealth; his suppression has 
therefore been demanded as an act of justice to the 
world's real workers. But the more philosophical 
economist has shown that the merchant does pro- 
duce value, by taking goods from the place where 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 63 

they are not wanted to the place where consumers 
demand them. The critic who understands his 
business and pursues it honestly is a literary pro- 
ducer, no less than the author; he finds a market, 
that is, appreciative readers, for works that other- 
wise might never be heard of, and thus adds some- 
thing of substantial value to literature. One need 
not maintain that the critic's function is coordinate 
with that of the author, that the critic produces 
what is as valuable as the masterpiece of poet or 
philosopher, to make good his right of existence. 
Who shall say that Addison, in his series of papers 
on Milton, did not produce something of real, yes, 
of high value to letters.^ If it were not for the 
makers of paper and ink the author himself would 
soon vanish, "like the poor aphis or the lowly 
caterpillar;" but shall the worthy mechanics and 
tradesmen who supply these materials of the scrib- 
bling art be privileged to insinuate that authors are 
no better than parasites .'' Go to, they shall be 
roundly rebuked if they are guilty of such pre- 
sumption, and that by Mr. Howells himself. 

It is a vain fight on which Mr. Howells has 
entered, even were he thrice-armed by having his 
quarrel strictly iust. The sons of Zeruiah . . , . 

i- J J A contest vain 

be too hard for him. The critics grow ^t^^s^'- 
apace. Their name is legion, their spirit Ishmael- 
itish, their activity incessant, their prolificacy por- 
tentous. It is easy to flout them, as Mr. Howells 
has done, — as Disraeli did when, with mordant 



64 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

sarcasm, he. defined a critic as an author who has 
failed; or as Byron, when, smarting under the lash 
of Jeffrey he wrote, with wit vitriolic: — 

" A man must serve his time to every trade 
Save censure — critics all are ready made. 
Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote, 
With just enough of learning to misquote ; 
A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault, 
A turn for punning, call it attic salt ; . . . 
Fear not to lie, 't will seem a lucky hit ; 
Shrink not from blasphemy, 't will pass for wit ; 
Care not for feeling — pass your proper jest, 
And stand a critic, hated yet caressed." 

Obviously Jeffrey might have retorted that Byron 
showed his own confidence in the recipe by follow- 
ing it exactly, but the critic is notoriously easy to 
be cowed into meekness when the baited author 
turns upon him, and so Jeffrey missed this chance. 
On the whole, have not the flock of harried authors 
had their fair revenge on the critics? Most of the 
latter would never have been known to posterity 
had they not been " damned to everlasting fame " 
in some immortal work, as the fly is sometimes 
preserved in the precious drop of amber. 

Still let us maintain that the critic is a harm- 
less, and even a useful, animal. Like a certain 
Not so black other great personage he is not so black 
as painted. ^g j^g jg generally painted. The author 
is often unjust to him, and sometimes — let us be 
honest now — he is even more unjust to himself. 
Criticism is not the last refuge of incompetence. 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 65 

It is not fault-finding, though both critic and 
author are but too prone to forget this essential 
truth. A critic, as the etymology of the word 
implies, is a judge, — one who weighs evidence, 
who impartially examines, discerns, separates, dis- 
tinguishes. It is no less the office of the judge to 
acquit the innocent than to convict the guilty. It 
is a small part, and the most disagreeable part, of 
criticism to point out defects ; the more agreeable 
as well as the more important work is to recognize 
beauties and to help others see them. The critic 
has already been compared to the merchant, but 
an apter analogy is perhaps suggested by the 
cicerone. It is his business to point out to others 
the places of interest, the strokes of genius, the 
felicitous achievements in literary art, in the work 
under review, and thus assist others to form a just 
and intelligent judgment as to its total merits. 
Nor does it avail for the author sneeringly to chal- 
lenge the critic to prove his competence by produc- 
ing superior work. The critic may reply, in the 
saying of Didacus Stella, that a dwarf standing on 
the shoulders of a giant may see farther than the 
giant himself. 

Anybody can find fault, — anybody, at least, who 
has a small soul, a feeble wit, and a bitter tongue. 
To criticise, in the true sense, is not ^ .,. . 

' ' Criticism not 

within the powers of everybody. It de- fa^'t-finding. 
mands a large soul, a trained mind, a catholic taste, 
a teachable disposition, — a sweet reasonableness, 

5 



66 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

to use the phrase of Matthew Arnold. The just 
judge must sometimes pronounce sentence against an 
offender ; even Mr. Howells has shown us that, when 
he condemns so gently the rabid critic. Bad work 
must be pronounced what it is, for the critic, like 
every other honest man, must strive to keep "alight 
that little spark of celestial fire — conscience." 
But the critic who recognizes the true dignity and 
responsibility of his office will be at least as hearty 
in recognition of good work as in condemnation of 
bad; his praises will be bestowed quite as freely as 
his blame, and with greater evident pleasure, for he 
will always rejoice when his conscience absolves 
him from the duty of censure, and warrants him in 
inviting a warm but discriminating admiration for 
the work under review. He will, however, shun, 
as he would shun the plague, indiscriminate praise 
or blame. He will regard gush as only one degree 
less culpable than slander; for to bear false witness 
in favor of one's neighbor is only one step above 
bearing false witness against him. In short, he 
will try to speak the truth, as any honest man 
should, neither less nor more. It will, of course, 
be the truth as he sees it that he will speak, 
colored more or less, unavoidably, by his peculiar 
training, prepossessions, and acquired beliefs; and 

" A fool must now and then be right by chance." 

But better than speak the truth as he sees it, can no 
man do — except recognize the limits of his intelli- 



WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS. 6/ 

gence, the fallibility of his judgments and the equal 
presumptive honesty of those who differ from him. 
It is in this last particular that many critics, other- 
wise well equipped, grievously fail. 

Enough, with over-measure, of this. Let Mr. 
Howells, if he will, renounce the critic and all his 
works, and in the next breath do the same works 
and greater things also. We do not demand of him 
that consistency which is the virtue of feeble minds, 
but are rather grateful to find in him a single re- 
deeming vice. Even though he occasionally aggra- 
vate us by his wrong-headedness, as some of us 
must consider it, Mr. Howells is easily the first 
.living American novelist. We cannot deny him 
the praise of being faithful to his own Faithful to ws 
ideal, of practising diligently his own '^^^'* 
canons of art. He himself tells us, with great 
earnestness and frequent iteration, that he utterly 
contemns and rejects the notion that the novel 
should aim merely to entertaiij. What we must 
say to any serious fiction is this, "Is it true.-' true 
to the motives, the impulses, the principles that 
shape the life of actual men and women .'' " If the 
answer be in the affirmative, such a work cannot be 
bad, for this truth ** necessarily includes the highest 
morality and the highest artistry." To realize this 
ideal, Mr. Howells has earnestly striven. If he has 
failed in some instances to reach it, his failure is 
not due to lack of conscientious industry and high 



68 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

resolve. And certainly, within his limitations, of 
all our American writers, none has come nearer to 
doing in fiction what the greatest master of the 
drama has declared to be the purpose of the stage, 
"to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to show 
virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and 
the very age and body of the time his form and 
pressure," 



IV. 

HENRY JAMES. 

" T|SOCRATES adviseth Demonicus," says quaint 
Ji old Burton, " when he came to a strange city, to 
worship by all means the gods of the place." If you 
go to Boston, you must be prepared to do homage to 
Henry James. One who is not ready to make this 
author his idol may yet freely admit that he is not ime 
qiianiite negligeable. We may love him, or we may 
detest him; ignore him, we cannot. 



I. 

Almost two decades ago Ba}-ard Taylor wrote, 
apropos of some of Mr. James's earlier work: " Few 
men have been so brilliantly equipped for literary 
performance. Carefully trained taste, large acquire'- 
ments of knowledge, experience of lands and races, 
and association with the best minds, have combined 
to supply him with all the purely intellectual requisites 
which an author could desire." This is B,i]]iantiy 
praise that is no more than scrupulously «^"'pped- 
just to one who was born, if ever an American novelist 
was, under a lucky star. His father, distinguished 
during his lifetime as Henry James, senior, was a 
philosopher and theological v/riter of considerable 



70 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

note, — the inheritor of an ample fortune from his 
father, a merchant of Albany, N. Y, ; a graduate of 
Union College in 1840, and afterward a student at 
Princeton; by turns orthodox Presbyterian, Sande- 
manian, Swedenborgian, Spiritualist; a man who 
boxed the compass of theological belief retaining still 
the personal regard of all who knew him. Henry 
James, junior, was born in New York City, in 1843. 
His education was altogether out of the common; 
little of it was according to ordinary methods, and all 
was conducted under his father's personal supervision; 
begun in America, after 1855 it was carried on and 
completed abroad, at Geneva, Paris, Boulogne-sur- 
Mer, and Bonn. What little he learned in the Har- 
vard Law School, which he entered in 1862, does not 
require this statement to be modified, one supposes, 
for the law was with him never a serious purpose. 

Into the nature of this education there is no need 
to inquire, since its fruits are so evident in Mr. James's 
writings. It may have been less or more than an 
equivalent of the scholastic lore of an ordinary uni- 
versity course; it certainly included an intimate 
„ , , r acquaintance with several modern lan- 

Knowledge ot t 

Europe. guagcs and a comprehensive knowledge of 

their literatures. It also comprised such a minute 
familiarity with foreign society, with Ettropean cus- 
toms and ways of thinking, as probably no other 
American novelist has had. Mr. Howells has certainly 
made good use of his opportunities abroad, but he 
has not that minute knowledge of foreigners that is 



HENR V JAMES. 7 1 



shown by the author of " The American." Mr. Craw- 
ford may know Italy better than Mr. James, but he 
does not know France with anything like the latter's 
thoroughness, nor England either, for the matter of 
that. Indeed, it is not saying too much to assert that 
long residence abroad has made Mr. James more 
European than American. Since 1869 he has spent 
most of his time between England and France. This 
has given him peculiar qualifications for originating a 
new type of fiction. Fortunately for his fame, he has 
not attempted to represent a society of which he knows 
comparatively little. In the few cases in which he has 
chosen an American scene for his story he has selected 

his locality with discretion, and has relied Lack of famil- 
iarity with 
for his chief characters on foreigners and America. 

travelled Americans. The American abroad he has 

studied with great care and attention toMetail; the 

American at home he may almost be said not to know. 

Whether one likes the flavor of his books or not, one 

cannot fail to distinguish it from that of any other 

American novelist. 

II. 

The new species of fiction originated by Mr. James 
has been named the International Novel. We may 
take "The American "^^ (Boston, 1877), Tiieintema- 
" Daisy Miller" (New York, 1878), "The ^ionai Novel. 
Portrait of a Lady " (Boston, 1881), and " The Princess 
Casamassima " (London and New York, 1886), as the 
best examples of his work in its various periods. In his 



72 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

earlier books he was a preacher of social righteousness. 
His theme was the contrast between American and 
European life and manners, greatly to the disadvan- 
tage of American manners and ideals, in many cases. 
The American, in the book of that title, is a man in 
middle life who has " made his everlasting fortune," 
and has gone to Europe to enjoy it, with some vague 
idea of marriage as a part of the enjoyment. He is a 
very good specimen of the " self-made " American, 
not too much inclined to worship his Maker, by no 
means vulgar in his tastes, rather intellectual and 
artistic in a crude, untaught way, not loud or aggressive 
in manner, appreciating himself at his full value, yet 
modest withal, clean in morals, and unsophisticated in 
Parisian viciousness, — in short, a gentle- 

The American. i i i • 

man at the core, though lackmg some of 
the graces and polish demanded by " society." This 
Mr. Newman, while he does not quite believe money to 
be omnipotent, firmly believes that it will accomplish 
most things, and has no doubt that it will buy his way 
into the good graces of any foreigner. He falls in love 
with a young French widow, of noble family, — a family 
anxious for reasons of their own that she shall marry a 
second time, and marry a rich man. He becomes en- 
gaged to her, with her family's consent, but the noble 
marquis and his mother (who rule the family) are 
so overwhelmed with chagrin when they fully realize 
what a social gulf separates the American from them 
that they break off the match. The widow obeys her 
mother, though heart-broken, and retires to a convent. 



HENRY JAMES. 73 



Newman obtains proofs that the marquis and his 
mother are base and even criminal, threatens to expose 
them, but finally relents and burns the documents ; 
and in this tangled state of things the story reaches 
its conclusion with nothing concluded. In Daisy 
Miller we have the female counterpart of Newman, — 
the young woman who is as good as gold, so sure of 
herself that she never once dreams anybody 

111 1 11 1 ir Daisy Miller. 

can doubt her; who, nevertheless, does all 
manner of risky things, that in any girl of European 
training and traditions would indicate total depravity, 
but are in her only a combination of ignorance and 
wilfulness. 

One cannot deny that these two books are realistic 
in every detail. There are Newmans and Daisy Millers 
in Europe, — the type was more common, perhaps, a 
decade ago than now, — there are Americans more 
vulgar still, who do not stop with innocently doing 
compromising and outre things, but are shamelessly 
vicious. No doubt the American girl abroad deserved 
the sharp rebuke conveyed in "Daisy Miller; " her 
male counterpart was let off very easily, on the whole, 
in " The American." If one quarrels with Mr. James 
it must be on the ground of what he has 
not said, rather than of what he has said. 
He has told the truth, — that is 'to say, he has told a 
part of the truth. This is at once his justification and 
the chief ground of complaint against him ; for in 
fiction, as everywhere else, one feels — 

" That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies." 



74 AJ/EM/CAX IVRITEKS OF TO-DAY. 

Why, one asks again and again, has not Mr. James 
told the other half of the truth ? Why has he never 
depicted the American gentlewoman and gentleman 
abroad, cultivated, polished, courteous, refined? That 
is a type which exists as truly as the other, and is 
quite as worthy of representation ; nor is it beyond the 
powers of Mr. James to represent it adequately. He 
knows and doubtless appreciates the American cos- 
mopolite, of both sexes, and his art would be truer if 
it had been more comprehensive. The angry criticism 
roused by "Daisy INIiller" was not, therefore, wholly 
that are whole unjust, but it was right rather as the ex- 
pression of healthy instincts than as a result 
of intelligent comprehension. People vaguely felt 
that the book was unjust to America, and that the 
author was unpatriotic. In this they were wrong; but 
complaint may be made with at least a show of justice 
against iMr. James for letting the book stand all these 
years without supplement. 

In some of his books, it might be replied in behalf 
of Mr. James, he has represented the polished Amer- 
ican. But this is only partly true ; he has, indeed, 
given us admirable portraits of the Europeanized 
American, notably in "The Europeans" and "The 
Portrait of a Lady," but hardly of the genuine Amer- 
ican. We certainl}' have among us men and women 
who, without having lost the rac}' quality of Western 
character, have acquired the culture and manner that 
mark well-bred people the world over. An English 
gentleman, a French gentleman, has a distinct flavor 



HEA'R Y J A MES. 7 5 



of his own, and is in many ways a more interesting 
personage than a cosmopolite whose nationality cannot 
be inferred from his speech or notions. An American 
gentleman should have the same attractiveness for the 
observer, and should furnish equally good material 
for the novelist's art. This is a type, how- 

_ A missing type. 

ever, for which one will search in vain 
through the novels of Mr. James. One finds it diffi- 
cult to understand why it should have been so 
persistently avoided by a writer so well fitted to depict 
it. Mr. James's art has suffered by his persistent 
preaching of the gospel according to Europe. One is 
willing to make the acquaintance of any number of 
Europeans, and even of Europeanized Americans, — 
in novels, — provided there is not constantly obtruded 
upon him the moral : " You are in all things less than 
the least of these, — except, perhaps, in native good- 
ness, which doesn't count." 

Possibly Mr. James has himself concluded that he 
has said quite enough on this subject, for in some of 
his more recent books, notably in "The Princess 
Casamassima," he has ignored his countrymen alto- 
gether. The result is that, having no lesson to 
inculcate, no warning to deliver, his story ^. 

' ° •' Signs of im- 

becomes charming. Mr. James in general provement. 
scouts the idea that a story need have a plot There 
is, he would say, no orderly and logical sequence of 
events in every-day life, and why should there be such 
sequence in fiction? He is equally contemptuous, 
in a general way, of that sentiment which demands of 



'j6 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

a novelist heroic actions on the part of his characters. 
He has in effect, if not in set terms, declared it to be 
imperfect art when an author is forced to disentangle 
the thread of his tale by recourse to murder or suicide 
or any other catastrophe. But not even Mr. James can 
practise this theory of the novelist's art with entire 
consistency. In the book last mentioned he panders 
to the unlawful desires of the ordinary novel-reader 
by providing something that may almost be called a 
plot ; he introduces incidents that in any other writer 
we should unhesitatingly call romantic ; and he con- 
cludes his tale with a suicide and the most approved 
blood-curdling concomitants. Surely there is reason 
to hope that in the course of a few more years he 
may in practice, if not in word, subscribe to Mr. 
Crawford's declaration of faith, and refuse to be called 
either realist or romancer. 



III. 



The art of fiction is not confined to the writing 
of novels; it includes also the Short Story. This is 
The Short 3, Comparatively ncw species of literature, 
^'""■y- by no means to be confounded with the 

Tale, of which so excellent specimens may be found 
in the " Decameron " and " Heptameron " by those 
who can stomach those books. There were heroes 
before Agamemnon, and there have been spinners 
of yarns before those of the present day. But the 



HENRY JAMES. yj 



short story of the period is not a mere tale, begin- 
ning nowhere in particular, and going on until the 
narrator's breath or the hearer's patience fail; it 
has as definite rules of composition as a novel or an 
epic. It has a distinct purpose, and that purpose 
is accomplished by a well-regulated advance, every 
step of which is calculated with the nicest art. 
There is no master of this species of composi- 
tion, on the whole, comparable to Mr. James, at 
least among American writers; and in this branch 
of the art of fiction American writers surpass all 
others save only the French. The short story 
has always been a striking feature of our litera- 
ture. Nothing better in this kind of writing has 
been produced than Irving' s ^^ Legend Americans mas- 
of Sleepy Hollow,)" Foe's "GolcTBug," t-«°fthisart. 
and the " Twice Told Tales " of Hawthorne. In 
England the short story has languished. The 
" Christmas Stories " of Dickens are perhaps the 
best specimens that "the tight little isle" can 
boast, though some of the work of Charles Reade 
and Wilkie Collins is not far inferior. But the 
best of these storie^^ lack the artistic perfection our 
American writers have achieved. The great English 
novelists either wrote short stories but seldom, like 
Thackeray, or not at all, like Scott. The British 
intellect seems to find difficulty in turning itself 
around in less than the orthodox three-volume 
space. 

It was the good fortune of Mr. James to begin 



78 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

his career at the very time when American periodi- 
Authorsmust ^al Htcraturc was entering on its most 
''^^' rapid stage of development. A market 

was thus provided for short stories such as had 
never been known before. Now, authors no more 
than other producers will keep on making unsalable 
goods, and the periodical press is a necessary condi- 
tion of prolific production of short stories, because 
it affords a market for them on a large scale, — a 
scale hitherto unexampled in the history of litera- 
ture. Even an author must live. Or, if the stern 
critic reply, a la Talleyrand, " Pardon me, I do not 
see the necessity," he will at least accept the state- 
ment with this amendment, — an author must live if 
he is to go on producing. And even if he is other- 
wise provided with the means of living than by 
payment for his writing, — as one conjectures may 
have been the case with Mr. James, — still, he will 
not, unless he is one of a thousand, go on writing 
unless he has some encouragement from the public 
to do so. He is doubly fortunate if he receives 
sufficient recognition to encourage him to proceed, 
yet is freed from the temptation to do hasty work 
for the sake of turning out "pot-boilers." 

Mr. James appears to have been thus independent 
of the pecuniary rewards of his pen at the outset of 
Requirements his carccr. Hc did not need to make of 

of the Short 

Story. his stories mere "pot-boilers." He early 

discovered that this species of writing demands 
capacity and training of a peculiar order, as any one 



HENR Y JAMES. 79 



else is likely to discover who sits down and tries to 
write a story by the light of nature. Power of in- 
vention, fertility of imagination, and4acil.ity; of style 
are indispensables, but the first requisites are sense 
of proportion, and lucidity of vision. In the short 
story there must be no fumbling with a purpose, no 
hazy observation, no indecisive movement; all must 
be sure, well-devised, clean-cut. 

There are no stories of this sort more workman- 
like than those of Mr. James; witness the volume 
entitled "A Passionate Pilgrim," composed wholly 
of these tales. Witness other volumes of the same 
character, and numerous stories in the magazines 
not gathered into volumes. "Workmanlike" one 
calls these stories; a little too workmanlike, per- 
haps, they are at times. The author is so delighted 
with the perfection of skill he has attained that he 
now and then invites us, as it were, to Too clever by 
admire his cleverness. His air seems to '^*'^" 
say, " See how thoroughly I understand my trade, 
and how neat a job I have made of this." If 
Mr. James had taken one short step further in 
advance, and learned the last secret of true art, to 
conceal art, his short stories would have arrived at 
perfection. 



IV. 



Whatever he may come to be, Mr. James is at 
present the acknowledged coryphaeus of the Ameri- 



8o AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

can school of realists. A disciple of Balzac, in his 
books we leave " the realms of gold " in which the 
romancer travels, and come down to the plane of 
solid commonplace, — 

" Where the Rudyards cease from Kipling, 



But he is also a disciple of Sainte-Beuve, and is 
able to give a well-reasoned exposition of the faith 
that is in him as a novelist, as well as to criticise 
His critical ^^^ Idcals and appreciate the work of 
essays. othcrs. In a word, he is a thoroughly 

equipped critic, whose refined taste, broad spirit, 
generous recognition of all that is good, and skill 
in the great art of putting things, make his essays 
more instructive and entertaining to many readers 
than his fiction. Anybody who has a particle of 
literary curiosity, or any appreciation of the graces 
of style, may be safely challenged to take up his 
"Partial Portraits," or his "French Poets and 
Novelists," or his volume on Hawthorne in the 
" English Men of Letters " series, and lay the book 
down before he has read substantially all of it. It 
is one of the cases where if you say A you must say 
B, and so on down the alphabet ; to read one page 
of the essay on Alfred de Musset, for example, 
means that the whole book must be finished out of 
hand. Not that this essay is so pre-eminently good, 
— the same result precisely would follow if the 
reader opened the book at random ; he would be 



HENR Y JAMES. 8 1 



fascinated, and could not stop except by an effort 
of will that he would not care to make. 

These critical writings throw an illuminating 
side-light upon the novels of Mr. James, inasmuch 
as they contain the theory on which his practice of 
the art of fiction is founded. The raison (T etj'e of 
the novel, he tells us, is that it may represent life, 
not a part of life merely, but all life. Other than 
this it has no justification, no place in literature. 
Obviously, if this principle be fully admitted, 
it follows that the novelist cannot be Aniiiuminat- 
restricted in his choice of subjects; he '"s side-hght. 
must be permitted to take his own wherever he 
finds it. He must, indeed, select, but art is a 
selection that is inclusive; therefore the artist 
must not deliberately exclude any part of life 
from his works. This may be an ideal principle 
for a work of vast design, like Balzac's "Comedie 
Humaine," but it is a hard saying for the guidance 
of a novelist whose scheme is modest and whose 
ambition is something less than world-embracing. 

But the principle seems to have an even worse 
conclusion enfolded in it, nor does Mr. James lack 
the courage to draw this conclusion. This is, that 
the art of fiction has nothing to do with morality. 
If it is true to its aim, if it faithfully tries to repre- 
sent life, a novel is not to be called either moral or 
immoral. There are bad novels and good novels, 
it is true, just as there are good pictures and bad, 
but in either case the adjective connotes artistic, not 

6 



82 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

moral, qualities. A novel is good when it is well 
written, it is bad if it is ill written, and Mr. James 
No morals in avows that he Can see no other distinc- 
^'''^'-'' tion. Now one hopes that the American 

public is ready to admit the truth of this theory 
of art neither in the case of pictures nor in the case 
of novels. The sound, healthy sense of the people, 
uninstructed in art criticism, revolts from the state- 
ment that pictures designed to corrupt the morals 
of youth, pictures that accomplish such corruption, 
are to be coldly judged as works of art. Novels 
that have no better purpose than to drag forth to 
the light and expose to the gaze of the innocent and 
pure a mass of festering and putrid moral corrup- 
tion, cannot be admitted to be good, because of any 
technical skill shown in the work. The eternal 
distinction between good and evil, between virtue 
and vice, cannot be obscured by dilettante theories 
of art. 

Mr. James is, to be sure, entitled to the praise of 
omitting to follow up his own theory to its legiti- 
mate conclusions. Some saving grace of common- 
sense, some unacknowledged remnant of an Anglo- 
Saxon conscience, has held him back from the 
Lacks the cour- couimission of many things that he defends 

age of his . -r^ i i i i i • 

theories. as legitimate. Doubtless he has a desire 

to be read, and that not as most people read Zola, 
— in a corner, and with a shamefaced air, — but 
openly and with a good conscience. No man of 
American or English birth, unless his mind is 



HENR Y JAMES. 8 3 



hopelessly besmirched, can read a certain type of 
French novel without apologizing to himself for 
the insult, and trying to conceal from others what 
he has done. At worst, he will attempt a lame 
self-justification on the ground that "so much is 
said about the book, you know, that I felt I must 
read it and judge for myself." If he brings such 
books into his house, he puts them on some shelf 
of his bookcase where they are hidden by other 
volumes, carefully locks the doors, and keeps the 
key in his pocket night and day. If he runs the 
risk of moral contagion himself, as he might risk 
catching small-pox or typhus, he has no idea of 
exposing his wife and children to contamination. 
The general existence of such a feeling is the 
strongest evidence that morals cannot really be 
dissociated from art. Even in France the young 
girl is most strictly and sedulously kept from see- 
ing pictures or reading books that are constantly 
before her elders. Why } Whoso can, let him give 
a reason consistent with the theory that art is 
unmoral. 



V. 



Before we can take leave of Mr. James one or 
two other matters demand at least a passing men- 
tion. He not only ranks, by general suffrage, 
among the first of living novelists and critics, but 
he has of late become a successful playwright. Some 



84 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY, 

years ago he dramatized his "Daisy Miller," and 
it had a fair success. Later his clever stage version 
His dramatic ^f "The American" won him greater 
*°''''' plaudits still, both in London and in 

the United States. In London he contended with 
the disadvantage of a temporary spasm of social 
feeling against all persons and things American, 
and won a hearing in spite of this prejudice, which 
is described by competent observers as unusually 
bitter. There has been a recent interesting an- 
nouncement that Mr. James has written another play, 
not a dramatization of a previously printed novel, 
but a wholly new composition. It has not yet been 
produced, and any opinion of it can be based only 
on imagination. 

It is remarkable that so few of our American 
writers have attempted dramatic composition. To 
Few American ^"^^ ^ho is not restrained by conscientious 
ramatists. scruplcs play-writing offers great induce- 
ments. No other form of literary work is so well 
rewarded. The author of a fifth-rate play, beneath 
notice for its literary quality, provided it has the 
"drawing" power, and can hold its place on the 
stage, receives in the way of royalty as many hun- 
dreds a week as the author of a first-rate novel 
receives thousands in a year. It may be that 
American writers are restrained by conscientious 
scruples; that while they do not see any more 
moral evil in the drama than in the novel, they do 
see more moral evil in the theatre than in the 



HENR Y JAMES. 8 5 



bookstore. Be this as it may, the dramatic suc- 
cesses of American authors may be counted on the 
fingers of one hand, with perhaps a finger or two to 
spare. This does not necessarily imply, however, 
that the exceptional success of Mr. James argues 
any high literary value in his plays, for the literary 
merit of the modern comedy is surprisingly small. 
Such success as he has attained, or may hereafter 
attain, by his theatrical ventures, will add more to 
his bank account than to his fame. 

A word must also be said of the style of Mr. 
James. It would not, perhaps, be called a brilliant 
style; it lacks the glitter and glow of Agentiemaniy 
Macaulay as much as the fulminant cor- ^*^'^' 
uscations of Carlyle, but on the other hand it is 
not tamely correct. Without absolute lapse into 
solecism, a sentence will often have a familiar col- 
loquial turn, even in the more serious writings, that 
puts the reader at his ease and promotes an excel- 
lent understanding between him and the author. It 
is the style of the most finished urbanity, of the 
broadest and most generous culture; marked by 
limpid clearness, by well-bred ease, by flexibility 
and variety, not at all by mannerisms. Matthew 
Arnold at his best, when he forgot to be elaborately 
condescending and offensively ironical, may be 
named as perhaps the closest analogue to Mr. 
James in the matter of style; only there was about 
the Englishman, even when at his best, a certain 
stiffness of manner and a lack of nimbleness of 



86 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

wit, that one does not find in the American. Mr. 
James's study of French literature has had the 
happiest effect on his style. "Whatever is not 
clear is not French " is a maxim generally accepted 
in France, and if the rule might be reversed, one 
would be compelled to pronounce Mr. James more 
French than English. 



V. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 

VIRGINIA, once known as the mother of states- 
men, has of late years yielded her function to 
Ohio, but no State has yet wrested from Massachu- 
setts her crown as the mother of poets, orators, 
and romancers. The rocky soil and stern climate 
of New England, though surpassed by the genial 
prairies and rich bottom-lands of West and South 
in producing corn and cotton, are unequalled for 
producing men. In the culture of the Massachusetts, 
fruits of learning and the flowers of rheto- -°'her of .ne.! 
ric, warmer climes and soils more fertile compete 
with her in vain. Plain living and high thinking are 
still found in Yankeedom oftener than elsewhere, 
though in these degenerate days it must be con- 
fessed that " plain living " is a figure of speech, 
which, translated into every-day language, means 
the best of everything and plenty of it. The intel- 
lectual supremacy of New England is not wholly 
tradition. Perhaps the sceptre is about to depart 
to the Middle West, — so we are often informed, with 
a triumphant assurance that almost, though not quite, 
inspires conviction, — but not until a new generation 



88 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

of writers gains the ear and heart of the nation, and 
those to whom we now hsten heedfully have gone 
over to the silent n:iajority. 



I. 



Charles Dudley Warner was born in Massa- 
chusetts, in the town of Plainfield, in the year 1829. 
He came of good though not distinguished Puritan 
stock. His father, a man of culture, died when he 
was but five years old. If his son did not fall heir 
Bred among ^^ ^ large cstatc, hc did inherit a love of 
the Puritans, ijterature, though for a time there was 
little to encourage its growth. Books were not 
numerous in those days in a New-England family, 
and what few there were seldom went beyond com- 
mentaries, biographies of eminent divines, and theo- 
logical treatises of the straitest Calvinistic type. We 
may be certain that young Warner made the best use 
of what scant opportunities of reading fell in his way. 
It was not a dreary boyhood that he spent, if we 
may judge from his " Being a Boy." In this book 
he has given us a sort of autobiography, less com- 
plete than that of Mr. Howells, and not quite so 
vivid a reproduction of boy life. It is, no doubt, to 
many a more enjoyable book, on account of its 
pleasant touches of humor; and it faithfully de- 
scribes some phases of life in New-England fifty 
years ago that are now quite non-existent. . 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 89 

Young Warner must have been a good student, 
and he apparently enjoyed rather exceptional ad- 
vantages for a New-England boy, for he was gradu- 
ated from Hamilton College in 1851, first His college 
prizeman in English. He had begun to ^''^^'^■ 
write for " Knickerbocker's " and " Putnam's " maga- 
zines while still a college student, and seemed thus 
predestined to a literary career, but for some years 
led a rather roving existence, and tried his hand at 
several occupations. He was in 1853 a member of 
a surveyor's party on the Missouri frontier; in 1854 
he became a student of law at the University of 
Pennsylvania, being graduated in 1856; and until 
i860 he practised law at Chicago. In that year he 
met his fate, in the shape of an engagement as assis- 
tant editor of the Hartford "Press," becoming editor- 
in-chief the following year. In 1867 this paper was 
consolidated with the Hartford " Courant," of which 
Mr. Warner became co-editor with Joseph R. Hawley, 
— a position which he has held ever since. Becomes a 
Every day during these years he has J°"™^''^'' 
walked to his office — save the times of infrequent 
absence on vacation — and his daily editorial task 
has been performed with faithfulness and ability. 
His literary work has been done in his spare mo- 
ments, without interference with his regular profes- 
sional duties; and yet he has accomplished an 
amount of writing that would make a very credi- 
table record for most professed men of letters. Be- 
sides his contributions to the magazines, and his 



90 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

occasional articles that have never been collected, 
he has published since 1870 a good dozen and a 
half of volumes, all of which are established favorites 
with the public and have a steady sale. His connec- 
tion in recent years with " Harper's Magazine " is too 
well known to need comment. It is enough to say 
that on the death of George William Curtis the one 
name that suggested itself to every reader as the 
name of him who was alone fitted by culture and 
traditions to take up the work then laid down, was 
Mr. Warner's. And though the " Easy Chair " has 
been abolished in name, it still lives in spirit under 
Mr. Warner's direction as one of the choicest feat- 
ures of the magazine. 



II. 



Mr. Warner's connection with literature grew 
out of his w^ork as a journalist. In 1868-69 he took 
a well-earned holiday abroad, and (as the manner of 
editors is) wrote to his journal a series of letters 
about what he saw and heard. He had seen rather 
First trip more of his own country than is usual with 

abroad. Americans who go abroad for the first 

time ; he had gained a very considerable personal 
acquaintance with men and affairs ; he was tolerably 
familiar with the history and literature of Europe, — 
in short, he was a decidedly intelligent, wide-awake 
and observant traveller, and was besides blessed with 
a sense of humor. These letters of his had a fresh- 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 91 

ness, a piquancy, a charm, that speedily gained for 
the writer a local literary reputation, which did not 
long remain merely local. As the letters appeared, 
they were generally copied by the news- 

Saunterings. 

papers, and when, several years later, they 
were republished in a volume with the appropriate 
title of " Saunterings," a wider circle of readers gave 
them a welcome rather unusual in the case of such 
a book. 

These letters, however, while very successful, did 
not make a " hit." That was accomplished, before 
the appearance of " Saunterings," by a series of 
weekly papers on gardening pubHshed one summer 
in the Hartford " Courant." The author's idea seems 
to have been suggested to him by Horace Greeley's 
" What I Know about Farming," and he apparently 
began with some hazy idea of writing a mild bur- 
lesque on this book. Like the creator of My Summer in 
the immortal Pickwick, however, he had ^^^'■^®°- 
not progressed far before his serial took on a char- 
acter of its own, and totally refused to be finished on 
the lines he had planned. A good many readers of 
this article will doubtless recall with a smile the first 
dehghtful reading of " My Summer in a Garden " 
(1870), with its playful wit, its profound moral "ob- 
servations," its wholesome sentiment, and its whim- 
sical side-glances at literature, politics, and religion. 
Mr. Warner's reputation as a humorist was estab- 
lished by this volume, and confirmed by his " Back- 
log Studies," which followed two years later. He 



92 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

well deserved his reputation, and has admirably sus- 
tained it since. His humor is of the delicate and 
refined type, not the " side-splitting " sort that it is 
the fashion to associate with the adjective American. 
Delicacy of ^^ rccalls the traditions of Addison and 
humor. Steele, and Lamb, and Washington Irving, 

— not he of the Diedrich Knickerbocker period, but 
the Irving of the " Sketch Book." 

Mr. Warner's reputation as a humorist, as has been 
said, was established by his papers on gardening, — 
too well established, shall we say? No doubt his 
friends considered the success of " My Summer in 
a Garden" a very fortunate circumstance, and so, 
from some points of view, it certainly was. One 
A dangerous Hiiglit plausibly maintain, from another 
reputation. point of vicw, that so great a success was 
on the whole a misfortune. It is a dangerous thing 
for an author to establish at the outset a reputation 
as a humorist. To be known as a joker is to risk 
being known as nothing else. The American public, 
always ready to cry encore to anybody that enter- 
tains it, is especially quick to demand the reappear- 
ance of one who has made it laugh. We do dearly 
love to be tickled, we Americans. When the joker 
of established reputation faces us, we are on a broad 
grin before he has uttered a word, and we resent it 
as a personal insult if he fails to justify our expecta- 
tions by setting us off into fits of laughter. Rarely 
indeed do we consent to take a man seriously who 
begins by making us laugh. We apply to him the 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 93 

Roman theory of the indehbihty of orders, — once a 
humorist always a humorist, we demand shall be his 
rule of life. Any effort on a humorous writer's part 
to be instructive, to plead a case seriously, to take 
a sober view of the world, we resent as in some 
sort a breach of trust, an attempt to obtain goods 
under false pretences. He has chosen his character, 
and, with stern virtue, we insist that he shall live 
up to it. 

There is, perhaps, no better proof of Mr. Warner's 
power than that he has compelled the unwilling world 
to take him seriously, in spite of the fact that he made 
his first hit as a joker. But he has cer- Not a mere 
tainly not done this without strenuous ■'°'^^''' 
effort; the very rarity of the achievement is proof 
not to be controverted of its difficulty. Dr. Holmes 
tells us, in his pleasant verses on " The Height of the 
Ridiculous," how dangerous to others it is for a witty 
writer to be " as funny as he can." It maybe danger- 
ous to others, but it is absolutely fatal to himself, un- 
less he has had the prudence previously to establish 
a reputation for sobriety. Dr. Holmes took the pre- 
caution of printing certain hard and dry technical 
medical works, and thereby making himself highly 
respected in his professional circle, before he in- 
dulged himself in the luxury of making the world 
laugh. John G. Saxe neglected this precaution, and 
it was a grief carried with him to the grave that the 
public would never look on him as anything but a 
writer of clever parodies and side-splitting jokes in 



94 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

verse. In his later years, Henry W. Shaw was a 
proverbial philosopher of extraordinary merit; his 
pithy sentences are the quintessence of practical 
wisdom, often startling us by the light they flash 
into the very heart of things ; but public opinion 
compelled him to misspell his shrewd sayings, as 
the illiterate " Josh Billings," in order to get a 
A horrible hearing. Mr. Samuel L. Clemens has pub- 
exampie. Hshed Certain books in serious literature, 

without in the least persuading the public to take 
him seriously. Many read " The Prince and the 
Pauper" through with misgiving, lest' a huge jest 
might after all be concealed beneath the apparently 
sober tale. They failed to enjoy the story, because 
they were continually and nervously looking for 
some hidden snare. It is only when, as " Mark 
Twain," he writes some such trash as " The Adven- 
tures of Huckleberry Finn " that this really capable 
writer can make sure of an appreciative hearing. 
But Mr. Warner has fairly conquered for himself a 
place among the solid writers of his day, though he 
has never scrupled to be funny, even as funny as he 
can, whenever he has cared to do so. This fact gives 
him a unique place among American men of letters, 
and testifies to the possession of mental and moral 
powers quite unusual. Even so great men as Dean 
Swift and Sydney Smith found that it is perilous to 
a man to gain a reputation for wit. Their 

A unique place. 

careers were marred by men's refusal to 
give credit for solid ability and sterling worth to 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 95 

those on whom it has come to depend for its amuse- 
ment. One might hesitate, perhaps, to say that Mr. 
Warner's will eventually be a greater name in letters 
than these, but he has certainly done what they 
signally failed to do. 

III. 

No English authors are more generally read, or 
are more likely to retain their hold on popular taste, 
than the essayists. Bacon and Addison and Johnson, 
Lamb and De Quincey and Macaulay, are names 
that represent very diverse styles of writ- popularity of 
ing, as well as hostile opinions on almost '""^ ^^^^^^ 
every question of religion, history, and politics. 
Nevertheless, in letters they meet on common ground 
and have certain common characteristics. If there 
may be assumed to exist an American school of 
essayists at all comparable to the English, Mr. 
Warner must certainly be given a very high place 
in it, by the suffrages of future readers as well as by 
the unanimous consent of his own day. The essay 
seems to be his natural vehicle of thought, the form 
in which his idea always expresses itself when he 
does not consciously seek for some other style of 
expression. This is evidently the case even when 
his books are not avowedly essays. His books of 
travel, for instance, are really essays on what he has 
seen. He is not so much the narrator of the small 
adventures that befall the modern globe-trotter, or 



96 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

the describer of landscape or of the panorama of town 
life, as the philosophic observer. The interest of his 
Warner essen- books depends far less on the intrinsic 
tiaiiy an essayist, jni-gj-est of what hc saw than on how these 
sights impressed him. He is one of the most sub- 
jective of travellers, and one reads " Baddeck " or 
" On the Nile," not to learn anything about these 
localities, — one would go to a guidebook or a gazet- 
teer for bald information, — but to enjoy the sen- 
sation of looking at them through Mr. Warner's 
spectacles. 

In his avowed essays, Mr. Warner's most ambitious 
work has, perhaps, been his study of Washington 
Irving. This first appeared in 1880 as a Preface to 
the " Geoffrey Crayon edition " of Irving's works, the 
publication of which was begun in that year by the 
Messrs. Putnam. The year following, this study, 
much expanded in details but written on the same 
general lines, appeared as a volume in the " American 
Men of Letters " series, of which Mr. Warner is the 
Warner and general editor. This was a peculiarly con- 
irviug. genial task, since there is an evident 

likeness of character and literary taste between sub- 
ject and critic. This likeness does not go beyond a 
general sympathy of method and style ; it does not 
in the least imply imitation, Mr. Warner does not 
appear to have "formed himself" upon any model, 
and no mousing critic will ever be able to establish an 
undue resemblance between his work and that of any 
other writer ; but there are certain elements in Irving's 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 97 

work that are found also in his. He has the more 
correct taste, according to present standards, espe- 
cially in that he is more robust and virile, less given 
to sentimentality, and not so prone to value gentility 
above manhood. In appreciation of Irving's best 
work, in gentle but unsparing comment on his un- 
worthy performance, and in the accuracy with which 
it distinguishes the one from the other, this criti- 
cal essay must be pronounced work of a very high 
order. 

As has already been intimated, one of Mr. Warner's 
chief merits as an essayist is his originality. His 
books are evidently the work of a man who is accus- 
tomed to associate with the best people, both in 
society and in books, but he makes no 
more parade of his literary than of his 
social acquaintance. Very entertaining essays have 
been written, and such will doubtless be written again, 
that are a mere cento of fine passages openly or 
secretly borrowed from other writers. One need not 
deny that such essays have their place, and even show 
a good deal of cleverness i 1 the writer, if one yet ex- 
presses a modest preference for those that do not 
point out the author as one who has been to a great 
feast of languages and stolen the scraps, or designate 
him as an adroit snapper up of unconsidered literary 
trifles. Mr. Warner does not appear before the 
world as a critic of literature and of life deep versed 
in books and shallow in himself. He has doubtless 
read widely — that appears in a general tone and 

7 



98 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

manner of culture rather than in any vain show of 
learning — but he has observed keenly and thought 
much, viewing life from many points, looking upon it 
with the knowledge of a practical man of affairs, yet 
with the mental aloofness of a humorist. 

Another great merit of Mr. Warner as an essayist 
is his independence. He does not judge according to 
conventional standards, but according to the higher 
verities of character. This power to see things as they 
are, undistorted by the media of current ideas, he 
showed in a truly remarkable way in his book " On 
Horseback through the South." The 

Independence. "■ 

reader of that book must remember that 
its author was in his youth an abolitionist, and through- 
out his manhood had been a Republican ; that he had 
been for many years editor of the chief Republican 
newspaper of a State in which almost every citizen 
of wealth or culture or social standing was a Repub- 
lican. There was every reason in the world why he 
should have been swayed by ancient prejudices, by 
present partisanship, by social feeling, and all uncon- 
sciously to himself should have been unable to see 
any good in the South, or any prophecy of hope for 
the future of that section. Just the reverse was the 
fact. Casting aside all the sentiments and prepos- 
sessions of his past, Mr. Warner travelled with a mind 
open to receive his impressions from the facts them- 
selves, as he saw them. He was not such a fool as 
to suppose that he saw in this brief trip everything to 
be seen ; but what can any traveller do more than 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 99 

carefully observe and truthfully tell what he does see ? 
This Mr. Warner did with so much intelligence, accur- 
acy, and faithfulness as to win the sturdy dislike of 
many with whom he had been politically on Horseback 
associated for years. No Southern man Somh. 
could have given a more hopeful picture of the New 
South, and no Southern man's description would 
have been received with such credence as was Mr. 
Warner's. Recognizing the fact that the picture was 
only a partial one, the people of the North saw in 
it much to warrant bright hopes of the future, and 
many of the misapprehensions and misgivings indus- 
triously fostered by politicians for selfish purposes 
were incontinently swept away with other rubbish that 
had accumulated since the Civil War. Mr. Warner has 
written books that will probably be read long after 
this, but nothing that he has ever done constitutes a 
better title to the grateful remembrance of Americans 
who love their country. 

IV. 

Every woman, it has been said, has it in her to 
write at least one novel, but why not every man as 
well? It was to be expected that so enterprising and 
successful a writer as Mr. Warner would sooner or 
later try his hand at fiction ; the only wonder is that 
he has never yielded to the temptation to " drop into 
poetry." It is only within a few years, however, that 
he has made the venture, and his stories are still but 



100 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

two : " Their Pilgrimage," and " A Little Journey- 
in the World." Both of these ventures have been 
fairly successful, — sufficiently so to warrant 
further attempts, but by no means so strik- 
ingly successful as to eclipse, or even to rival, his 
work as an essayist. A disciple of the new school of 
realism might object that Mr. Warner has not eman- 
cipated himself from slavery to traditional theories of 
the novel. For one thing he shows too much desire 
to construct a plot — even though he is not entirely 
successful in the attempt — to win praise from this 
school. Then in his representation of character he is 
not so stiffly and dryly realistic as it is latterly the 
fashion to be. His people talk too much like living 
men and women. He does not trouble himself to affect 
profound philosophy of life or art, like one who stalks 

about, — 

" His cogitative faculties immersed 
In cogibundity of cogitation." 

In a word, he is in great danger of excommunication 
from the church of true believers, who hold, as is well 
known, that a novel must be so vapid or so foul that 
nobody can read it. This, however, though it make 
him the scoff of the elect, is not a serious objection to 
those of us who are not ashamed to be frankly Philis- 
tine, and bow down to our ancient idols, Scott and 
Dumas, Dickens and Thackeray and George EHot; 
who have a sneaking fondness for Robert Louis 
Stevenson and Rider Haggard, and are not even above 
being entertained by an adventure of Terence Mul- 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. lOI 

vaney's. Indeed, were one to pick a quarrel with Mr. 
Warner at all on the score of his fiction, it would be 
on the ground that he has not the full courage of his 
convictions. He sometimes sacrifices to the god of 
realism. Thus " Their Pilgrimage " reads in spots as 
if it had been written to be a guide-book for certain 
fashionable resorts and afterward made over into a 
novel. " A Little Journey in the World " is almost 
too carefully lifelike a study of the " Napoleon of 
Finance " with whom more than one recent Wall 
Street transaction has made every reader of newspapers 
familiar. These are at worst venial faults. 

One is compelled to add, nevertheless, that both 
these books show a lack of that technical skill in the 
art of fiction which comes from long practice. They 
are the books of a gifted amateur, rather than of a 
trained novelist. They would have been excellent as 
the first ventures in literature of a young man; they 
are not without promise as the first novels . , . t, • i 

'^ Lack technical 

of any writer; but they do not reach a ®'''^'' 
level in fiction comparable to their author's eminence, 
so -well won, in another department of literature. It 
is hard to say whether he would do better to make 
further experiment, with a prospect of genuine success 
before him, or continue to do the work for which he 
had before shown so singular fitness. The latter course 
might be pronounced the more prudent, but the 
former if crowned with success in the end might do 
more to enhance his repute, enlarge his audience, and 
increase his usefulness. All depends on whether he 



I02 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

is himself conscious of having a further message for 
the world that can be delivered in no other way so 
well as through the medium of the novel. It would 
be unfortunate if one who stands in the front rank of 
essayists should decline to the third rank among 
novelists. And yet analogy seems to point out such 
a fate as only too probable. Bayard Taylor and 
Oliver Wendell Holmes are examples of men who 
have done work of the highest worth in poetry and in 
general prose writing, but came far short of success, 
as writers of fiction. Taylor's " Story of Kennett " 
and the Autocrat's *' Elsie Venner " are far from 
failures, they would indeed have been successes for 
other men, but they are not worthy of the best powers 
of the authors, as shown in other forms of literary 
expression. Fiction was not, for either of these, the 
best way of giving his message to the world. 

Mr. Warner is still in the prime of life. Not for 
another decade at least will he need to say, — 

" It is time to be old, 
To take in sail." 

In this matter we Americans are improving, and no 
longer look on a man as beginning to fall into his 
dotage the minute he has passed fifty. The men 
between sixty and ninety have, with rare exceptions, 
been the real rulers of the world ; and when a man of 
fifty wins a prominent place in imperial affairs. Eng- 
lishmen commonly speak of him as rather young for 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 103 

such responsibility, — this, too, in spite of the fact that 
Pitt was Premier at twenty-five. That the ripest fruit 
is yet to come from Mr. Warner's tree of wisdom is a 
reasonable forecast, which every one who loves his 
country and enjoys a good book will earnestly hope 
may be realized. 



VI. 

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

ANEW HAMPSHIRE town was a good place 
to be born and bred in some fifty years ago. 
Especially if it were a thriving seaport town, with 
a good "academy" and plenty of chance for fish- 
ing and boating, it was a very paradise for a boy. 
It was such a town — namely, Portsmouth 

Portsmouth. , i . , m^ -n • i A 1 1 • 1 

— into which Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
came November ii, 1836, and it was here that the 
foundations of his character were laid. Shortly 
after his birth, his father removed to Louisiana, 
and there invested his capital in a banking business, 
— invested it so securely, so the son informs iis, 
that he was never able to get any of it out again. 
After a few years the father and mother decided 
that New Orleans was no place for the up-bringing 
of a Yankee youth, and accordingly "Tom Bailey" 
was sent back to Portsmouth to sojourn with his 
relatives and get an education. The history of 
those years at Portsmouth he has himself given us 
in "The Story of a Bad Boy" (Boston, 1869), —a 
book that delights young and old in almost equal 
measure. The boys enjoy it because it is so per- 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 105 

feet a pieture of a boy's life, full of amusing pranks 
and adventures, and written in a spirit of boyish- 
ness that manhood had not outgrown. Their elders 
value the book somewhat for this very freshness of 
spirit, but still more for its delicate humor and the 
literary charm of the narrative. "Tom Bailey" 
was a bad boy only in a Pickwickian sense. He 
was the opposite of the "good little boy" of the 
story books, who always died young. That is to 
say, he was a genuine boy, who would much rather 
spend his stray pennies for "bull's-eyes" xhe"bad 
than give them to send missionaries to ''°^"' 
the heathen ; who dearly loved a frolic and had no 
desire to be an angel. Of course he got into 
scrapes, and of course he tried to run away to 
sea, — no New England boy of any spirit failed to do 
that at some time, — but these are the worst things 
that he brings forward to justify his self-imposed 
title. In all of Mr. Aldrich's writings one seems 
to detect the savor of that New England boyhood. 



I. 

This happy youth-time and an education that was 
to end with a course at Harvard were brought to 
an untimely close by the failure of the An intermpted 
father's New Orleans business, closely ^^"<=^t'°°- 
followed by his death. Relatives were ready and 
more than willing to furnish the means for the 
college course, but young Aldrich, while no dul- 



I06 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

lard at his books, had never developed any marked 
scholastic tastes, and he was too self-reliant to accept 
the proffered aid. It seemed better to him to make 
the plunge at once into the great world and seek 
his fortmie. An uncle who was a merchant in New 
York offered him a clerkship, and the youth of six- 
teen entered on a business career that he doubtless 
hoped would be brilliant, but which proved remark- 
able for little else than its brevity. 

It does not appear, at least from any of his own 
confidences, that Mr. Aldrich was a precocious 
writer. He never lisped in verses; he did not 
produce plays and novels by the ream in his salad 
days ; he was too healthy and active a boy to spend 
hours sacred to play in spoiling paper and inking 
himself. But he had the root of the matter in him 
Drops into Houc the Icss, and early in his "teens" 
^°"'"'^- his bent showed itself. The "Ballad of 

Babie Bell " he had written and printed before he 
was twenty; and if he has written stronger verses 
since, he has not written anything more sweet and 
tenderly pathetic. One may gratefully note in 
passing, as a mark of sounder taste, that in the 
later editions of his poems Mr. Aldrich has dropped 
the affected spelling that originally spoiled this 
poem, and we have now the "Ballad of Baby Bell." 
It was a few affectations like this, and a somewhat 
dandified style of portrait published with some of 
his earlier works, that made many people look on 
Mr. Aldrich for a long time as a literary Miss 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDKICH. 107 

Nancy. They were slow in giving him credit for 
the real virile power that his writings show. 

Even during his clerkship days Mr. Aldrich spent 
more hours at the shrine of the Muses than in the 
temple of Mammon, This is not to say that he 
was an idle and inefficient clerk; it is merely to 
say that his business service, though conscientious, 
was perfunctory, and that the work to which his 
heart was given was that of letters. Nor need 
one hesitate to say that he chose the better part. 
Doubtless the posting of ledgers is a calling as full 
of dignity and as worthy of honor as that of poet 
or romancer, provided one has the vocation and 
honestly obeys it. 

" Who sweeps a room as for Thy cause 
Makes that and th' action fine." 

But the posting of ledgers is not honorable work 
for him who is conscious of another vocation; it 
can at best be nothing more than an honest way of 
earning his bread. For three years the budding 
author continued his attempt to serve two masters, 
and then gave up the struggle, devoting xhe parting of 
himself without reserve to the Muses. A *eways. 
happy choice this was for American literature, and 
a fortunate one it has proved to be for the author, 
but the issue was for a time doubtful. At that day 
there was little encouragement for a young man 
to undertake the earning' of a living by his pen. 
" Knickerbocker's " and " Putnam's " and " Godey's " 



I08 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

were the only periodicals then published that could 
accept and pay for even an occasional contribution. 
Mr. Aldrich was compelled, therefore, to look for 
some semi-literary occupation that would ensure 
him a living while he wrote. This he found for a 
time in a publishing house, for which he acted as 
"reader" of manuscripts submitted for publication, 
and as a proof-reader also. In 1856 he joined the 
staff of the "Home Journal," then conducted by 
Messrs. Willis and Morris. 

Mr. Aldrich's connection with New York lasted, 
with varying fortunes, until 1870. While here he 
cemented friendships with many of the young men 
Early friend- ^^ Icttcrs of his day, — notably with Sted- 
^^'P^' man, Stoddard, and Bayard Taylor, — 

friendships that have lasted unbroken to the pres- 
ent day, or have been severed only by death. He 
seems to have been a man who made friends easily, 
and he had also the qualities that hold friends once 
made. How much he is respected and admired by 
his fellow-craftsmen was shown clearly in the pub- 
lic dinner lately given him by New York men of 
letters, who vied with one another to do him 
fitting honor. But aside from this circle of friends, 
it would be hard to say that the New York experi- 
ences of Mr. Aldrich made any impression on his 
life and work, — ^any impression that can be identi- 
fied, one means, of course. That these years had 
an important part in the making of the man it 
would be absurd to question. The point is that 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 109 

in his writings there is singularly little trace of 
his New York life. He has attempted no study 
of metropolitan life in his more ambitious work, 
and even in his short stories and jeux d' esprit the 
tone of the metropolis is not discernible. One 
might almost infer that he has, for some reason 
good in his own sight, deliberately avoided turn- 
ing his New York life to account in his verse 
and fiction. His readers may well regret that this 
is the case, for he is a man in some ways pecu- 
liarly fitted both to appreciate and to describe life 
in New York. 

11. 

The second period in Mr, Aldrich's literary 
career began with his removal to Boston, in 1870, 
to become the editor of "Every Satur- a journalistic 
day," a young and ambitious periodical, ^^p^"""^"*- 
that it was hoped would become a sort of Ameri- 
can "Spectator." More purely literary than the 
" Nation, " it was not adapted to interest and hold 
so large a constituency of readers, and its success 
did not meet the expectations of the founders. It 
may be doubted whether a high-class literary weekly 
can succeed in the United States, — the "Critic" is 
the nearest approach to such a paper, — but it seems 
clear that the failure of " Every Saturday " to be a 
brilliant success was, at any rate, no fault of its 
editor. A better choice for the post could not well 



no AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

have been made. He had published "The Dells," 
a volume of verse, in 1855; "Babie Bell and Other 
Poems" in 1856; and collected editions of his 
poems in 1863 and 1865 respectively. He had 
experience in practical work for periodicals and 
publishers that had prepared him for editing such 
a journal with intelligent appreciation of the public 
taste, and then he had a considerable personal ac- 
quaintance with American writers that was of great 
value to a young periodical, since it was easy for 
him to secure the co-operation of the best talent. 
All this did not avail, however, to make the paper 
financially successful. When in 1874 its publica- 
tion was suspended, Mr. Aldrich might have made 
his valedictory in Cato's words : — 

" 'T is not in mortals to command success, 
But we '11 do more, Sempronius ; we '11 deserve it." 

This did not complete his editorial career. A 
few years later — in 1881, to be precise — Mr. 
Editor of the Howclls retired from the editorship of 
Atlantic. ay^^g Atlantic Monthly," and the pub- 

lishers naturally turned to Mr. Aldrich as to a fore- 
ordained successor. For some years he had been 
a regular and welcome contributor to the magazine; 
he was familiar with its traditions, and by training 
and temperament was suited to carry on the work, 
with some infusion of original ideas, but avoiding 
any marked break with the past. This work he 
continued until 1890. Without disparagement of 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. Ill 

other editors the "Atlantic" has had — and there 
has been a brilliant succession of them — one can- 
not fail to recognize in the work of these years the 
very highest editorial and literary ability. "A 
nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings 
better," says some old writer, but Mr. Aldrich has 
never shown such jealousy of his fellow-singers. 
On the contrary, it was his good fortune to bring 
before the public for the first time writers, in both 
verse and prose, of now established reputation; and 
others, who may have appeared in print before, 
made their present fame during his editorship. 
Among these it suffices to mention as examples 
" Charles Egbert Craddock " (Miss Murfree), Sarah 
Orne Jewett, and Louise Imogen Guiney, with the 
addition, possibly, of Arthur Sherburne Hardy, — 
though his reputation was fairly made, in the first 
instance, by the publication of a story Authors dis- 
that had not appeared serially. It was '^°''^''^^- 
creditable to the editor's enterprise, however, that 
he promptly "annexed" the new writer. Mr. 
Aldrich held most of the regular staff of "Atlantic " 
writers, even in the face of hot competition from 
New York magazines, and their offers of higher 
prices for work. Authors are but human, however, 
and it is not wonderful that some forsook their New 
England divinity and went after strange gods. 

Since going to Boston, Mr Aldrich's most impor- 
tant publications have been : two new and enlarged 
editions of his poems (in 1873 and 1876), "Mar- 



112 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

jorie Daw and Other Stories "(1873), ''Prudence 

Palfrey" (1874), "The Queen of Sheba" (1877), 

" The Stillwater Tragedy " ( 1 880), " From 

Ponkapog to Pesth," and "Mercedes" 

(both 1883). All the volumes named, save the last, 

are prose. The title-work of the last volume is a 

prose tragedy, but at least half the book consists of 

"Later Lyrics." This is a very respectable list of 

works, as regards number merely, and if it does 

'not entitle the author to be reckoned the peer of 

Messrs. Howells and Crawford in industry, it shows 

that he has by no means idled his time aimlessly 

away. 

in. 

Mr. Aldrich's prose writings fully deserve their 
vogue. There are no cleverer short stories than 
"Marjorie Daw" and its companions. Marjorie in 
The prose particular is a masterpiece, the surprising 
writings. conclusion being artfully concealed from 

the reader until the very last sentence. The only 
story with which it can be fairly compared, in this 
particular, is Mr. Frank R. Stockton's "The Lady 
or the Tiger? " The denouement of Mr. Stockton's 
story may be pronounced the more humorous, but 
that of Mr. Aldrich's is certainly the more witty. 
And in the matter of style, Mr. Stockton is nowhere 
in comparison with Mr. Aldrich. There is in the 
latter' s prose a bonhomie, — we have no adequate 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 1 13 

English phrase for this combination of high spirits 
and gentlemanly manner, — a deftness of touch, a 
sureness of aim, a piquancy of flavor, a playfulness 
of wit, a delicacy of humor, that make it perfectly 
delightful reading. No other of our writers has 
caught so much of the spirit of French prose, 
save Mr. Henry James; and Mr. Aldrich deserves 
the praise that, while he has learned from the 
French all that they have to teach, he has still 
remained essentially American. 

We have been considering his short stories only 
thus far, but what has been said is true of the other 
fictions. Indeed, with the single excep- Longshort- 
tion of ''The Stillwater Tragedy," these ''°"''- 
books are nothing else than long short-stories, if 
such a Hibernicism be permissible. "The Queen 
of Sheba " requires very large type and very thick 
" leads " to draw it out into the decent semblance 
of a duodecimo novel, and " Prudence Palfrey " is 
little better. But this is a trifling detail after all; 
what classifies these books with short stories is not 
their actual length, but quality of plot. In neither 
of the two volumes named is there material for a 
novel. The stories are so essentially simple and 
uncomplicated, the characters are so few and so 
easily developed, that to spin these yarns out to the 
orthodox novel limit would be to dilute all the 
flavor and sparkle into unmitigated flatness. Mr. 
Aldrich has too nice a taste to spoil good wine by 
adding three times its bulk of water; he is too good 



114 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

an artist to disregard the self-limited development 
of his plot. 

In "The Stillwater Tragedy" he has a subject 
that justifies, if it does not require, more elaborate 
treatment. His characters are more complex; his 
plot demands space for working out to a natural con- 
clusion; his situations are dramatic. It is, there- 
fore, his most ambitious prose work, and it shows 
more power, than anything else he has written. 
This is true of the artistic treatment of the theme 
only; the moral element in the book, while whole- 
some in intent, is vitiated by sentiment. There 
The labor ^^^^ bccu no treatment of the vexed 
question. " Jabor qucstiou " in fiction that is not 

weakened by its sentimental tone. Sympathy with 
one side or the other has prevented all novelists 
from throwing the white light of truth on the sub- 
ject, and it is probably in the nature of things that 
this should always be the case. Mr. Aldrich 
comes short of the highest achievement precisely 
where Dickens and Charles Reade had failed before 
him, and it must therefore be allowed that he has 
at least failed in good company. The excellences 
of the story are quite independent of this defect, 
and the book was so good as to warrant the hope 
that its author would at the next trial rise much 
higher. In the dozen years that have since passed 
there has been no next trial, and this book therefore 
remains his high-water mark in prose writing. 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 1 15 



IV. 

As a poet, Mr. Aldrich deserves more general 
recognition than he has ever received. " The Ballad 
of Baby Bell," one of his earliest poems, 

His verse. 

still remains that by which he is chiefly 
known to the majority of readers. His circle of 
admirers is comparatively small, but it comprises 
all who have a genuine love for poetry, and a culti- 
vated taste, — all who can enjoy 

" A perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, 
Where no crude surfeit reigns." 

We have among our American poets, living and 
dead, no more intelligent and conscientious artist 
in verse. His conception of the poet's art is well 
expressed in some lines to an unnamed author : — 

" Great thouglits in crude, inadequate verse set forth, 
Lose half their preciousness, and ever must. 
Unless the diamond with its own rich dust 
Be cut and polished, it seems little worth." 

There has been no lack of the cutting and polish- 
ing in Mr. Aldrich's verse, and his workmanship 
approaches perfection. He excels in short poems. 
A poetic thought that can be adequately set forth 
in a quatrain, a sonnet, a dozen couplets, or a half- 
dozen stanzas, he treats to perfection, but he has 
never shown the same ability to handle a a carver of 
large theme. He is a carver of exquisite '^^'"^°^' 
cameos, not a sculptor of great statues, or a painter 



Il6 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

of splendid landscapes. Let it not be supposed 
that this is said in any spirit of disparagement; it 
is merely a proper description of the work he has 
chosen to do. Critics of all time are agreed that 
the lyrics of Sappho evince a poetic genius not less 
fine — and perhaps a more precious poetic art — 
than the epics of Homer. To carve cameos may 
be an art as dignified and as worthy of the world's 
honor as the building of cathedrals : that depends 
on the artist, rather than on the bulk of his 
product. 

The fault of American literature in general is 
hasty, crude workmanship. Our writers are not 
sufficiently sincere; they lack genuine reverence 
for their art; conscientious fidelity in details they 
have never learned. This is true of even so affluent 
a genius, so perfect an artist when he chose to take 
Defect of pains, as Lowell; and how much truer it is 

American 

literature. of thc ninety and nine who lack his genius 
and resemble him only in their faults. American 
authors consider their work done when it is only 
well begun, — when they have given a first crude, 
imperfect expression to a happy inspiration. The 
weeks and months of patient toil needed to cut and 
polish the rough gem, they are either unable or un- 
willing to give. So far as the artistic defects of 
American literature may be fairly ascribed to in- 
ability to do better work, the failure may be par- 
donable. The slaves of the pen must live of the 
pen; and bread must be had, if the writing suffers 



THOMAS BAILS Y ALDRICH. \ \ 7 

by undue haste to publish. Poetry, however, is 
rather a case apart. In most instances the publi- 
cation of verses puts little money in their author's 
purse, — or in the publisher's either, if all be true 
that's said, — and the temptation to market one's 
unripe fruit is not great. The inducement being 
so small, whether from poverty or from cupidity, 
to rush into the market-place out of due time, he 
who prints his verse before he has made it as good 
as he can is without excuse. Mr. Aldrich has no 
cause to enter any plea for mitigation of judgment. 
He has certainly done his best, and that is to suc- 
ceed in the noblest sense, as he himself says in one 
of his sugar'd sonnets : — 

" Enamoured architect of airy rhyme, 
Build as thou wilt ; heed not what each man says. 
Good souls, but innocent of dreamers' ways, 
Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time ; 
Others, beholding how thy turrets climb 
'Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all their days ; 
But most beware of those who come to praise. 
O Wondersmith, O worker in sublime 
And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all in all ; 
Build as thou wilt, unspoiled by praise or blame. 
Build as thou wilt, and as thy light is given : 
Then, if at last the airy structure fall. 
Dissolve, and vanish — ■ take thyself no shame. 
They fail, and they alone, who have not striven." 

It cannot be said, because Mr. Aldrich has con- 
fined himself chiefly to "short swallow-flights of 
song," that he is incapable of a longer effort. His 



Il8 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

" Spring in New England " is the best ode that 
Decoration Day has inspired, though not the best 
known; and the longest of his poems, "Judith," is 
conceived in the spirit of Milton and composed in 
the spirit of Keats. One suggests these two names 
only to characterize the work, not to imply doubt of 
its original power. Probably Mr. Aldrich is too 
fastidious in taste, too careful in workmanship, to 
attempt a long poem, in despair of ever finishing 
it according to his high standard of excellence. 

In most of his verse there is a blithe and debonair 
spirit. Especially is the humor that flashes from 
His.whoiesome ^any of the poems marked by this fresh - 
spirit. j^ggg q£ spij.j|-_ Even in the youthful 

verses there is singularly little of that cynical, 
world-worn manner affected by juvenile poets in 
general. Mr. Aldrich has never posed as a Blighted 
Being. The dash of cynicism that one occasionally 
lights on is of the quiet sort that a well-bred man 
of the world now and then shows, — not a manner 
assumed for effect, but a genuine, though a passing, 
mood. If one describe the poems as a whole, in 
any terms but those of praise, it is only to express 
some surprise mingled with regret that the author 
has not more frequently struck a note that thrills 
one's higher nature. Yet his art is so fine at its 
best, so apparently spontaneous in its finished 
excellence, that all regret vanishes as one reads. 
What, for instance, could be finer than this closing 
stanza from " Spring in New England .-* " — 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 119 

" Hark! 'tis the bluebird's venturous strain 
High on the old fringed elm at the gate — 
Sweet-voiced, valiant on the swaying bough, 

Alert, elate, 
Dodging the fitful spits of snow, 
New-England's poet-laureate 
Telling us Spring has come again ! " 

Verse like that ranks alongside of the best of 
Shelley or Wordsworth; one's sole lament is that 
there should be so little of it, and that he who is 
so well qualified to be nature's poet should have 
employed himself so largely with society verse. 



V. 

American writers who have produced a play that 
has real literary merit, and is at the same time 
adapted to stage representation, are few indeed. 
Mr. Aldrich holds an honorable rank among this 
small band by reason of his "Mercedes." 

. Mercedes. 

This drama was published m 1884, but 
it was not acted until 1893, when it held the 
stage at Palmer's Theatre, New York, for a week. 
This is a brief, but a decided, dramatic success. 
Though divided into two acts or scenes, the 
drama is practically continuous. In the first scene 
we learn from a dialogue at the bivouac fire that 
Captain Luvois has been ordered to attack the 
Spanish hamlet of Arguano with a detachment of 
French soldiers, and put all the inhabitants to the 



I20 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

sword. The duty is most unwelcome, for in that 
village dwells the woman he loves, whom he has 
been compelled to leave by the exigencies of mili- 
tary service. He is determined to save her. In 
the second act Mercedes is discovered in the 
hamlet with her child, unable to flee with her 
neighbors because she cannot abandon her old 
grandmother. The soldiers find wine, which they 
believe has been poisoned. They demand that 
Mercedes drink some of it as a test; and, believing 
her lover false, and sick of life, she drinks and 
gives some of the wine to her child. The soldiers 
then drink and all are poisoned. Just then Luvois 
arrives, and Mercedes lives only long enough to 
hear that he has been faithful and still loves her; 
but he, too, has drunk of the wine before seeing 
"Supp'dfuii hsr. The curtain falls on a stage 
with horrors." gtrcwed with corpses. This is tragedy 
in allopathic doses, to be sure, yet the incident is 
probable, possibly historical, and the strength of its 
situations is obvious and undeniable. The theme 
is worked out in the details with dignity, self- 
restraint, and power, and the literary finish is what 
we always expect, and never expect in vain, from 
Mr. Aldrich. Altogether, the production of the 
play must be pronounced most gratifying, since 
it was well staged and well acfed, and pleased 
about equally the critics and the public. It does 
not place the author among the great dramatists, 
but it marks him a successful playwright, and war- 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 12 I 

rants expectations of something stronger when he 
next essays dramatic composition. 

VI. 

It is the distinction of Mr. Aldrich that he 
belongs to the small group of American writers 
who have a European reputation. Several of his 
stories have received the compliment of publica- 
tion in a French version in the " Revue des deux 
Mondes," which is the blue ribbon of the The British 
novelist. His books have been " pirated " ' '^"'^'^' ' 
freely by those canny European publishers who have 
stolen both wisely and too well. His name is 
sometimes mentioned in English periodicals with 
that tone of polite condescension which the Briton 
means for compliment. It is true that the refer- 
ences to him and his writings are not always intel- 
ligent, and betray on the writer's part a plentiful 
lack of all knowledge save the one fact that Mr. 
Aldrich does exist. Mr. Brander Matthews not 
long ago, in the course of some strictures on the 
insularity of English men of letters, instanced the 
case of a critic of pretensions who had classified 
the '* Queen of Sheba " among the poems of Mr. 
Aldrich. He very properly said that this was a 
sort of ignorance that would be considered dis- 
graceful in an American writing of Mr. Andrew 
Lang, for instance. Mr. Lang came to the defence 
of his brothers of the craft, and denied their insu- 



122 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

larity, but in so doing gave an amusing proof 
that Mr. Matthews was right. " I have not read 
Mr. Aldrich's * Queen of Sheba ' " (I quote from 
memory, but with substantial correctness, I am 
sure), "but I am quite willing to believe that it is 
equal to his other poems." The point, of course, is 
Insular ignor- ^hat the Briton is not compelled to write 
^^^^' about American authors, — he always has 

the privilege of silence, — but if he does undertake 
to write about them, he should at least be familiar 
enough with the title-pages of the books mentioned 
not to confound a prose romance with poetry. Mr. 
Matthews was quite justified in directing attention 
to the fact that the English man of letters seldom 
thinks it worth his while to learn something about 
American matters before he undertakes to write 
about them. Why, indeed, should he, since he 
writes for a public so much more ignorant than him- 
self that his worst errors, and even his deliberate 
inventions, will pass for accurate knowledge.^ 

Mr. Aldrich is still on the sunny side of sixty. 
His friends declare that he has discovered the 
Reserved sccrct of pcrpctual youth, and that while 
^°"'"' others grow gray and infirm, he is still 

"alert, elate," with body unworn and mind unflag- 
ging, capable of greater things than he has yet 
accomplished. There is, as one reads his books, an 
impression left that he has never quite put forth his 
full strength. The well-poised mind and deliberate 



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 1 23 

art imply reserve power. That this may prove to 
be a correct forecast, and that the crowning master- 
piece is yet to come, will be hoped by none so 
devoutly as by those who appreciate most justly 
both the excellence and the defect of what Mr. 
Aldrich has thus far produced. 



VII. 

• MARK TWAIN. 

ON a certain street in Hartford, Conn,, towns- 
men showing the local lions to the visitor 
from abroad will point with pride to a group of 
three comfortable, not to say handsome, houses as 
the homes of as many distinguished American 
writers. In one of these houses lives Charles 
Three Hart- Dudley Wamcr, in another, Harriet 
ford "lions." Beecher Stowe; the third, the finest of 
the three, is the winter home of the writer known 
the world over as Mark Twain. His winter home 
only is here, for this favorite of fortune has a 
summer home also, at Elmira, N. Y. , where he has 
done most of his literary work of late years. Mr. 
Clemens is not like most American authors; his 
fertile season is the hot weather, when brain- 
workers in general are either taking a vacation or 
envying those who can take one. To a building 
detached from the house, and a room accessible to 
no one when he has once locked the door, he 
repairs every morning after breakfast, and remains 
there the better part of the day with his work. 
Those who think that books, especially the books 



MARK TWAIN. 1 25 



of a "funny man," write themselves will do well 
not to express that opinion within reach of Mark 
Twain's arm — or pen. No American writer has 
won his fame by more honorable toil than Mr. 
Clemens. 

I. 

It is not surprising that Mr. Warner and Mrs. 
Stowe should be neighbors in a staid Connecticut 
town ; Mrs. Stowe was born in that State^ and Mr. 
Warner is a New Englander. But that Mark Twain 
should have drifted to Hartford as a permanent 
residence is only less astonishing than Mr. Cable's 
emigration from New Orleans to Northampton, 
Mass. For Samuel Langhorne Clemens ^ Missouri 
first saw the light in the village of Florida, '^°^' 
State of Missouri. This was in 1835, ^t a time 
when Missouri was on the very frontier of civiliza- 
tion, and its exact limits had not yet been defined. 
The condition of this western country at that time 
may be inferred from the fact that St. Louis was 
then a city of some twelve thousand people, while 
Chicago was not incorporated as a city until 1837, 
when it had rather more than four thousand inhabi- 
tants. It is not wonderful, therefore, that all the 
education young Clemens received was what he 
could obtain in the village school of Hannibal. 
This was supplemented by his training in a print- 
ing-office, which he entered at the age of thirteen. 



126 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

A bright boy in an old-fashioned printing-office 
was certain to pick up a very fair education of the 
practical kind. He would learn spelling, punctua- 
tion, and the other minor moralities of literature, 
as these things are seldom learned by boys whose 
schooling may have been better, but who enter 
other callings. He would also gain some knowl- 
edge of machinery; for in a country office the boy 
has to learn to work the press, and to repair it 
when it gets out of order, as it has a trick of doing 
often. 

When the lad had acquired enough skill to call 
himself a journeyman printer he set out to see the 
world, and his native State thenceforth saw little 
The "jour" of \iV!x\. Thosc wcrc the halycon days 
printer. ^^ ^|^^ " jOur " printer; the world was all 

before him where to choose. He set out, with no 
kit of tools to carry, and with certainty of employ- 
ment almost anywhere he might go, or of assist- 
ance from his fellows in the craft, thanks to a sort 
of free-masonry that prevailed everywhere among 
them. He might work his passage all around the 
continent and see life in all its phases, as no 
man of any other trade or profession could. We 
are told that Mr. Clemens worked at his trade by 
turns in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and 
New York ; and doubtless, if the whole truth were 
known, this would be a very imperfect catalogue 
of the places where he has stood at the case in 
his day. 



MARK TWAIN. 12/ 



By 185 1 he had tired of wandering about in this 
way, and became enamoured of another calling 
not less adventurous. He "learned the a Mississippi 
river" and became a Mississippi pilot, ^^^°'' 
continuing in this work for some ten years it would 
seem. At any rate, the next change in his life of 
which one can learn is his appointment in 1861 as 
private secretary to his brother, who had obtained 
an appointment as Secretary of the Territory of 
Nevada. Going to Nevada means, sooner 

Tries mining, 

or later, going into mining. It seems 
to have been sooner with Mr. Clemens, but he 
failed to "make his pile," as the miners say, though 
he did lay the foundations for the sympathetic 
studies of life in this region that he gave the 
world in " Roughing It. " No doubt it was this 
failure that turned him again to the printing-office, 
but this time he had a promotion; he was made 
city editor of the Virginia City "Enterprise." The 
rise from the composing-room to the editorial desk 
in those days, and in a far western town, was not 
so long a step. One conjectures that the city 
editor of the " Enterprise " " surprised by himself " 
the entire reportorial staff, and usually tiien joumai- 
carried his office in his hat. What we '^™" 
are more interested to know than, the number of 
assistants this city editor had is the fact that he 
began while in this service to write humorous con- 
tributions, and to sign them "Mark Twain," — a 
reminiscence of his pilot days, when this was a 



128 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

frequent call from the man who was taking sound- 
ings from the deck of a Mississippi boat. 

Mr. Clemens was now beginning his real work, 
but he had not yet settled into his stride, if we may 
borrow a phrase from athletics. In 1865 we find 
him in San Francisco, engaging in journalism and 
in mining operations. He spent six months of the 
following year in Hawaii, and on his return deliv- 
ered lectures in California. These, together with 
other of his published writings, were gathered into 
The Jumping ^ volumc Called "The Jumping Frog and 
^■^°2- Other Sketches " (New York, 1867). He 

was now fairly launched in a literary career, but his 
first great success was to come, though he had not 
long to wait for it. The publication of his account 
of a voyage through the Mediterranean, and travels 
Innocents ^^ ^hc adjoiuiug countrics, under the title 
Abroad. Qf a-pj^g Innoceuts Abroad" (Hartford, 

1869), made him famous at once; one hundred and 
twenty-five thousand copies were sold in three 
years, and probably not less than half a million 
copies have been sold by now, and yet the public 
is not tired of buying it. The fortunate author 
was now independent. After a brief connection with 
the "Buffalo Express," and the editing of a depart- 
ment in the "Galaxy," he settled for the rest of 
his life in Hartford, — not to be idle, but to work 
leisurely, with little or no temptation to spoil his 
writing by undue haste to get it to market. Since 
then he has published : " Roughing It " (Hartford, 



MARK TWAIN. 1 29 



1872), "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (Hart- 
ford, 1876), "A Tramp Abroad" (Hartford, 1880), 
"The Prince and the Pauper " (New York, 

^ Other books. 

1882), "The Adventures of Huckleberry 
Finn" (New York, 1884), "A Yankee at King 
Arthur's Court," (New York, 1889), besides several 
other volumes of less note. He has also edited 
"A Library of Wit and Humor " (New York, 1888), 
the best collection ever made of representative 
pieces by American humorists. In the preface 
he characteristically remarks that, could he have 
had his way, the " Library " would have consisted 
wholly of extracts from his own works. The reader 
may season this with as many grains of salt as he 
chooses. 

IL 

The immediate and permanent popularity of 
" Innocents Abroad " is not wonderful ; it is a book 
of even greater merit than the public gave it credit 
for possessing. It was read and enjoyed for its fun, 
and though nearly twenty-five years have passed, it 
is still a funny book, whether one reads it now for 
the first or the forty first time. But underneath 
the fun was an earnest purpose that the great mass 
of readers failed to see at the time, and even yet 
imperfectly appreciate. This purpose was to tell, 
not how an American ought to feel on seeing the 
sights of the Old World, but how he actually does 

9 



130 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

feel if he is honest with himself. From time im- 
A hater of memorial, books of travel had been written 
shams. -j^y Americans purporting to record their 

experiences, but really telling only what the writers 
thought they might, could, would, or should have 
experienced. This is a very familiar type of the 
genus globe-trotter; specimens of it are seen every- 
where in Europe, Murray or Baedeker constantly 
in hand and carefully conned, lest they dilate with 
the wrong emotion — or, what is almost as bad, 
fail to dilate with the proper emotion at the right 
instant. For sham sentiment, sham love of art, 
sham adventures, Mark Twain had no tolerance, 
and he gave these shams no quarter in his book. 
"Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away" is a fine 
phrase of Byron's, which, like most fine phrases, 
is not true. What Cervantes did was to "smile 
away" the ridiculous romances of chivalry, — chiv- 
alry had been long dead in his day, — the impos- 
sible tales of knightly adventure, outdoing the 
deeds of the doughty Baron Munchausen, that were 
produced in shoals by the penny-a-liners of his 
time. Not since this feat of Cervantes has a 
wholesome burst of merriment cleared the air more 
effectually or banished a greater humbug from liter- 
ature than when "The Innocents Abroad " laughed 
away the sentimental, the romantic book of travels. 
Mark Twain, perhaps, erred somewhat on the 
other side. His bump of reverence must be ad- 
mitted to be practically non-existent; and while 



MARK TWAIN. . 131 



his jests about the saints may make the unskilful 
laugh, the judicious grieve. The fact seems to be 
that he sees so clearly the humbug and pretence 
and superstition beneath things conventionally held 
to be sacred that he sometimes fails to see that 
they are not all sham, and that there is really 
something sacred there. In truth, Mark Twain 
has been slow to learn that "quips and cranks and 
wanton wiles " are not always in good taste. 
Throughout the book the author was just a frank 
a little too hard-headed, too realistic, too 
unimpressionable, too frankly Philistine, for entire 
truthfulness and good taste ; but it may have seemed 
necessary to exaggerate something on this side in 
order to furnish an antidote to mawkish sentimen- 
tality. His lesson would have been less effective if 
it had not been now and then a trifle bitter to the 
taste. Since that time travellers have actually 
dared to tell the truth ; or shall we say that they 
have been afraid to scribble lies so recklessly? 
Whichever way one looks at the matter, there is 
no doubt that American literature, so far as it has 
dealt with Europe and things European, has been 
more natural, wholesome, and self-respecting since 
the tour of this shrewd Innocent. 

The same earnestness of purpose underlies much 
else that Mark Twain has written, especially " The 
Prince and the Pauper," and "A Yankee Two English 
at King Arthur's Court." The careless ''''^^' 
reader no doubt sees nothing- in the first of these 



132 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

books but a capital tale for boys. He cannot help 
seeing that, for it is a story of absorbing interest, 
accurate in its historical setting, and told in remark- 
ably good English. In the latter book he will no 
doubt discover nothing more than rollicking humor 
and a burlesque of " Morte d' Arthur. " This is to 
see only what lies on the surface of these volumes, 
without comprehending their aim, or sympathizing 
with the spirit. Not the old prophet of Chelsea 
The seamy side himsclf was a morc inveterate hater of 

of chivalry. gj^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^.j^ Twaiu. Much 

of the glamour of chivalry is as unreal as the 
tinsel splendors of the stage; to study history is 
like going behind the scenes of a theatre, a disen- 
chantment as thorough as it is speedy. " Morte 
d'Arthur" and Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" 
present to the unsophisticated a very beautiful, but 
a very shadowy and unsubstantial picture of Britain 
thirteen centuries ago. Even in these romances 
a glimpse of the real sordidness and squalor and 
poverty of the people may now and then be caught 
amid all the pomp and circumstance of chivalry, 
and yet nobody has had the pitiless courage here- 
tofore to let the full blaze of the sun into these 
regions where the lime-light of fancy has had full 
sway, that we might see what the berouged heroes 
and heroines actually are. 

But Mark Twain has one quality to which Carlyle 
never attained; joined to his hatred of shams is a 
hearty and genuine love of liberty. His books could 



MARK TWAIN. 1 33 



never have been written by one not born in the 
United States. His love of liberty is character- 
istic in its manifestation. In a French- AWerof 
man it would have found vent in essays '''^^"^' 
on the text of liberie, fraternite, egalite, but eloquent 
writing about abstractions is not the way in which 
an American finds voice for his sentiments. Mark 
Twain's love of liberty is shown unostentatiously, 
incidentally as it were, in his sympathy for, and 
championship of, the down-trodden and oppressed. 
He says to us, in effect : " Here you have been 
admiring the age of chivalry; this is what your 
King Arthur, your spotless Galahad, your valiant 
Launcelot made of the common people. Spending 
their lives in the righting of imaginary wrongs, 
they were perpetuating with all their energy a sys- 
tem of the most frightful cruelty and oppression. 
Cease admiring these heroes, and execrate them as 
they deserve." This, to be sure, is a one-sided 
view, but it is one that we need to take in endeavor- 
ing to comprehend the England of King Arthur. 
There is no danger that we shall overlook the 
romantic and picturesque view while Malory and 
Tennyson are read, but it is wholesome for us some- 
times to feel the weight of misery that oppressed 
all beneath the privileged classes in England's days 
of chivalry. No books are better fitted to help a 
student of history "orient himself," as the French 
phrase it, than these two of Mark Twain's. 



134 AMERTCAiY WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



III. 

Except in the two books that may be called 
historic romances, Mark Twain has been a con- 
sistent realist. He was probably as innocent of 
intent to belong to the realistic school when he 
began writing as Moliere's old gentleman 
had all his life been of the intent to talk 
prose. He was realistic because it "came sort o' 
nateral " to him, as a Yankee would say. His first 
books were the outcome of his personal experiences. 
These were many and varied, for few men have 
knocked about the world more, or viewed life from 
so many points. Bret Harte has written of life on 
the Pacific coast with greater appreciation of its 
romantic and picturesque features, but one suspects 
with considerably less truthfulness in detail. The 
shady heroes and heroines of Bret Harte's tales are 
of a quality that suggests an amalgam of Byron and 
Smollett; they smack strongly of Bowery melo- 
drama. Mark Twain's "Roughing It" is a whole- 
some book, and as accurate in its details as a 
photograph, but there is nothing romantic or thril- 
ling about it. 

It is in the Mississippi Valley, however, that our 
author finds himself most at home, not only because 
his knowledge of it is more comprehensive and 
minutely accurate, but because it is a more con- 
genial field. Mark Twain understands California. 



MARK TWAIN. 



135 



admires it even, but he loves the great river and 
the folk who dwell alongside it. He is especially 
happy in his delineation of the boy of understands 
this region. If ever any writer under- *^*''°y- 
stood boy nature in general, from A to izzard, the 
name of that writer is Mark Twain. He has 
explored all its depths and shallows, and in his 
characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn 
he has given us such a study of the American boy 
as will be sought in vain elsewhere. He has done 
more than this ; he has given us a faithful picture, 
painfully realistic in details, of the ante bellum 
social condition of the Mississippi Valley. This 
realism redeems the books from what would other- 
wise seem worthlessness, and gives them a positive 
value. 

One ought also to recognize the great merit of 
this writer's short stories. Most of these stories 
are humorous in their fundamental conception, or 
have a vein of humor running through them, but 
they are not, for the most part, boisterously funny. 
They range in style from the avowedly His short 
funny tale of " The Jumping Frog of Cale- ''°"''- 
veras " to the surface sobriety of "The ;£i, 000,000 
Bank Note." In the composition of the short story, 
Mark Twain is so evidently perfecting his art as 
to warrant one in hazarding the prediction that 
much of his best work in future is likely to be done 
along this line. 



136 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



IV. 

Even our English cousins, ■ — as a rule, not too 
lenient in their judgments of kin across the sea, — 
admit that American humor has a distinct flavor. 
Not only so, they also admit that this flavor is 
delightful. To their tastes there is something wild 
and gamy about American humor, a tang that is 
both a new sensation and a continuous source of 
English appre- cujoymcnt. British commendation of 
ciation. American humor, however, is not always 

as discriminating as it is hearty. We must allow 
Englishmen the praise of having been prompt to 
appreciate Artemus Ward the only; but of late 
years they seem impervious to American humor, 
except of one type — that which depends for its 
effect on exaggeration. Exaggeration is, no doubt, 
one legitimate species of humor. The essence of 
humor lies in the perception of incongruity, and 
the effect of incongruity may be produced by exag- 
geration. This is the more effectively done if the 
style is dry; the writer must give no sign, until 
the very end (if even there) that he does not take 
himself seriously. The narrator must not by a tone 
of voice or change of facial expression betray any 
lack of exact veracity in his tale, or the effect is 
measurably lost. Mark Twain has frequently shown 
himself to be master of this style of humor. He 
can invent the most tremendous absurdities, and 



MARK TWAIN. 137 



tell them with such an air of seriousness as must 
frequently deceive the unwary. 

But this is not, as English readers mistakenly 
imagine, the best type of American humor; it is 
not even the type in which Mark Twain 

Cheap humor, 

reaches his highest level. Exaggeration 
is comparatively cheap humor. Anybody can lie, 
and the kind of Mark Twain's humor most admired 
abroad is simply the lie of circumstance minus the 
intent to deceive. It is morally innocuous, there- 
fore, but it is bad art. No doubt it is frequently 
successful in provoking laughter, but the quality 
of humor is not to be gauged by the loudness of 
the hearers' guffaws. The most delightful fun is 
that which at most provokes no more than a quiet 
smile, but is susceptible of repeated enjoyment 
when the most hilarious joke is received in a grim 
silence more expressive than words. To borrow a 
metaphor from science, humor is the electricity of 
literature, but in its finest manifestation it is not 
static but dynamic. The permanent charm of 
humorous writing is generally in inverse ratio to 
its power to incite boisterous merriment when first 
read. The joker who at first gives one a pain in 
the side soon induces "that tired feeling" which is 
fatal to continued interest. It is Mark Twain's 
misfortune at present to be appreciated abroad 
mainly for that which is ephemeral in his writ- 
ings. His broad humanity, his gift of seeing far 
below the surface of life, his subtle comprehension 



138 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

of human nature, and his realistic method, are but 
dimly apprehended by those Britons who go off in 
convulsions of laughter the moment his name is 
mentioned. It is probably in vain for us to pro- 
test against this misjudgment of American authors 
by Britons — 

" Against stupidity the very gods 
Themselves contend in vain." 

A false standard of what is truly "American" 
has been set up abroad, and only what conforms to 
that standard wins admiration. For that reason 
British readers have gone wild over Bret Harte and 
Joaquin Miller, while they neglected Bryant and 
Holmes, and for a time even Lowell, on the ground 
that the latter were "really more English than 
American, you know." Their own countrymen 
have a juster notion of the relative standing of 
American authors. In the case of Mark Twain 
they do not believe that he is rated too high by 
foreign critics and readers, but that his true merits 
axe very imperfectly comprehended. 



V. 

Mr. Clemens has forever silenced those who affirm 
that a successful author, or at any rate a man of 
genius, must necessarily be a fool in business. No 
reader of his books needed to be assured that he is a 
man of much shrewdness, alert in observation, and 



MARK TWAIN. 1 39 



understanding what he sees. These are quahties that 
make the successful man of affairs, and as a man of 
affairs he has been even more successful than as a 
writer. From the publication of his " Innocents 
Abroad " Mr. Clemens found himself in the fortunate 
position of an author sure of his audience. Business 
He had only to write and publishers would ^^^acity. 
stand ready to bid against each other for his manu- 
script, and the public were equally eager for the 
opportunity to buy the book. Whether by good 
fortune or by design, the Innocents fell into the hands 
of a firm that sells books by subscription only. This 
is undoubtedly the most profitable method of publish- 
ing books for which there is a certain, a large, and an 
immediate sale. It did not take so shrewd a man 
long to discover that large as his profits were from 
the phenomenal sale of his books, the publisher 
reaped an even larger harvest of dollars. It took not 
much longer for Mr. Clemens to ask himself why he 
should not be both publisher and author, and take to 
himself both profits. With a man like him, to think 
is to plan, and to plan is to execute. And though his 
pubhshing venture has proved on the whole an unfor- 
tunate one, this result is not due to Mr. Clemens. 
Had he given more of his personal attention to the 
business, the outcome would have been different, 
beyond a reasonable doubt. 

In private life Mr. Clemens is reputed to be one of 
the most genial and companionable of men. After 
all, the best humor, and the rarest, is good humor, 



I40 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

and of this Mark Twain has an inexhaustible stock. 
His friends say that he has never done himself justice 
as a humorist in his books ; he produces his master- 
pieces over a cigar with a few choice spirits. Pity it 
is, if this be true, that there is not a chiel amang them 
to take notes and prent 'em. 



VIII. 
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 

BOSWELL tells us that when an English poet, 
whose very name nobody now recalls, wrote 
in a heroic poem — 

" Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free," 

blufif old Sam Johnson mercilessly parodied the line 

into — 

" Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." 

One hesitates to provoke a like fate by declaring that 
the writer of romances should himself have led a 
romantic life, but a certain subtle fitness of things may 
be acknowledged when such is the case. No writer 
of our day has a history of so varied adventure, so 
checkered experience, so sudden fame, as this Ameri- 
can who was not born in America, and has lived fewer 
of his adult years in his own country than he has spent 
in almost any nook of Europe or Asia. 

Dates are stubborn things, but when one looks over 
the long row of volumes written by Mr. Crawford 
one finds it hard to realize that he was born at Bagni 
di Lucca, Italy, in 1853, and is therefore barely on 
the shady side of forty. He is the son of Thomas 



142 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Crawford, America's most original sculptor, — who, 
though born in New York City, was of pure Irish 
Birth and desceut. His mother was a daughter of 
lineage. Samuel Ward, a New York banker, and a 

sister of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and of genial " Uncle 
Sam " Ward, the favorite of Boston and Washington 
society. This mixture of Irish and Yankee blood, of 
artistic and practical temperaments, may be traced 
without too much fancifulness in all of Mr. Crawford's 
career, as well as in the lineaments of that counterfeit 
presentment with which his publishers have favored 
us. It is a frank, genial, manly face that looks out at 
us from this picture, suggesting an athletic frame and 
a capacity for the fullest enjoyment of the good things 
of life, while it also implies mental power and a domi- 
nant ideality. It is not the face of a mere dreamer, 
still less of a sensualist, but that of a well-rounded, 
well-balanced man, in whom mind and spirit dominate 
body. 

After the premature death of Thomas Crawford, the 
widowed mother and the young lad returned to this 
country, and made New York their home. Young 
Crawford's education was begun, but he himself con- 
fesses to his friends that the school — in the neigh- 
borhood of Union Square — had for him less 
attractions than the circuses that were then wont to 
make that locality their headquarters. In course of 
time he picked up enough learning to enter Harvard, 
but did not complete his course. In the early seven- 
ties he was a student of Trinity College, Cambridge ; 



FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 143 

later he spent two years at Karlsruhe and Heidelberg, 
and a final two years at the University ot Rome, where 
he devoted himself especially to Sanskrit. While he 
was still not far advanced in his twenties, the financial 
disasters following the panic of 1873 Ron,amic 
wrecked the ample fortune his mother had "''"''■ 
inherited from her banker-father, and the young man 
was unexpectedly thrown on his own resources. It 
was a severe test of both character and ability, but 
both bore the test well. To a young man of desultory 
education, literary tastes, and pressing necessities, 
journahsm offers irresistible attractions. To this pro- 
fession Mr. Crawford at once turned, and after devious 
wanderings he became a member of the editorial staff 
of the " Indian Herald," of Allahabad. His knowledge 
of Sanskrit stood him in good stead during this Indian 
episode, of which he has since made excellent use in 
" Mr. Isaacs " and " Zoroaster." We are told that his 
cue, as an Indian editor, was to write down Madame 
Blavatsky, theosophy and kindred subjects ; which is 
rather amusing when one remembers that his first 
essay in fiction was in this very realm of the marvel- 
lous and unknown that as a journalist he treated so 
lightly. The last ten years Mr. Crawford has spent in 
Italy, with occasional visits to this country, his home 
being a beautiful spot near Sorrento. In these facts 
of his history we find the key to his marked success 
as a novelist, as well as the sufficient explanation of 
his limitations. 



144 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO~DAY. 



I. 

Mr. Crawford may be said to have stumbled upon, 
rather than to have chosen, his career. After he had 
tired of Indian journaHsm, and had come to this 
country in search of some better occupation, he was 
one day spinning yarns about India to his uncle, Sam 
Ward. Mr. Ward was a man of some literary ability, 
and of much business shrewdness; in one of these 
yarns he saw literary possibilities, and he advised his 
nephew to write it out at length and submit it to a 
publisher. Such was the origin of " Mr. Isaacs," — 
for the nephew had, in this case, sense enough to take 
a bit of avuncular good advice. The success of the 
book was immediate and gratifying. It 

Mr. Is3.3CS 

was also well deserved, for, though " Mr. 
Isaacs" is crude, it is a book of great promise. There 
was a freshness in the subject, — Mr. Kipling had not 
then been heard from, — and an attractiveness about 
the mysterious hero, that atoned for defects obviously 
due to inexperience in story-writing. It was believed 
by those who read the book that the author would 
soon obtain the technical mastery of his art ; and that 
his native gifts, when matured and developed, would 
give him a high place on the roll of American novel- 
ists. This hope has not been disappointed, though at 
times its entire fulfilment has seemed improbable. 

Mr. Crawford has been astonishingly prolific. Since 
the appearance of his first story, in 1882, he has 



FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. I45 

written and published no fewer than twenty-three other 
volumes, most of them of full average novel size, and 
has others in manuscript. This is about a book and 
a half a year, a rate of production that in any case 
entitles him to be reckoned one of the most industrious 
of modern writers. His composition is almost incred- 
ibly rapid when he once begins a story in good 
earnest. He must, of course, have it mapped Astonishin 1 
out completely, so that nothing remains P''°''fic. 
but the actual work of clothing his conception in 
words. Then he has been known to compose a com- 
plete novel of one hundred and fifty thousand words 
in twenty-five consecutive working days, broken only 
by the intervening Sundays. This is an average of 
six thousand words a day, all written with his own 
hand, without aid of amanuensis, stenographer, or 
typewriter. Let anybody sit down some day and 
copy six thousand words ; he will find that the mere 
physical labor constitutes an exhausting day's work. 
Let him keep this up day after day for a month, then 
let him add thereto in imagination the mental strain 
of original composition, and he will have some 
conception of the stupendous nature of the feat 
accomplished by Mr. Crawford. Most literary workers 
occasionally write as many as six thousand words in 
a day, as a sort of tour dc force, but this is one of those 
things that we look back upon as matter of just pride. 
Who of us ever dreams of keeping this up for any 
number of consecutive days? 



146 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



II. 

It is not enough, however, that an author be indus- 
trious ; we also demand that what he does shall be 
worth doing, and shall be done with intelligent pur- 
pose. The late excellent Anthony Trollope to the 
^ . , contrary notwithstanding, a big piece of 

Genius wanted. ^ o o j. 

shoemaker's-wax on the seat of one's chair 
is not the chief condition of success as a writer of 
fiction. It is important first of all that an author 
have something to say, something worth saying, and 
that he know how to say it ; that granted, the wax 
may be very useful in getting it said, but that lacking, 
all the diligent labor in the world will result in quires 
of nothings, nothing worth. " Cudgel thy brains no 
more about it," says the grave-digger in " Hamlet," 
" for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating." 
If Mr. Crawford's books do not show genius, they at 
least show a cleverness that cannot be expressed in 
units of labor. Whatever may have been the case in 
the beginning, his later stories show the touch of the 
conscious artist, and we shall do well to consider the 
theory on which he avowedly works. 

For himself, he declines to be classified either as 
realist or romancer, since, in his view, a good novel 
should combine romance and reality in just propor- 
Neither realist tions, and neither element need shut out 
nor romancer. ^^ othcr. Evcry-day life would be a 
very dull affair without something of romance, and 



FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 147 

decidedly incoherent without reahty ; so that the novel 
that excludes either cannot be a true representation 
of life. Mr. Crawford's artistic creed is not complex : 
the novel must deal chiefly with love, a passion in 
which all men and women are interested ; it must be 
clean and sweet, since its tale is for all mankind ; it must 
be interesting; its realism must be of three dimen- 
sions, not flat and photographic; its romance must 
be truly human. What he tries to do is to " make 
little pocket-theatres out of words." In short, to his 
mind fiction is intimately allied to the HisanisUc 
drama — if, indeed, these are not essen- "®^ ' 
tially one art, applied to different conditions of 
expression. To criticise this theory of fiction would 
lead us too far afield, and might be unprofitable in 
any event; what concerns our present purpose far 
more than its truth is the inquiry. How successful 
and how consistent has been the application of this 
theory to the actual work of novel-writing? 



III. 



Mr. Crawford's stories may be classified as novels 
and romances. A " novel " may be defined as a more 
or less realistic fiction, a serious attempt to represent 
life as it is. By " romance " one understands a tale 
in which the illusion of probability is for the most 
part successfully maintained, while the story yet con- 
tains elements or incidents that on sober reflection one 
decides to be, if not contrary to fact, yet transcending 



148 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

all ordinary experience and setting the probabilities 
Crawford's quitc at defiance. Stories whose leading 
romances. niotive or turning point or chief interest 
depends upon something marvellous, mysterious, 
beyond ordinary human knowledge, not to say dis- 
tinctly supernatural, are romances. To illustrate by 
reference to models now classic in the literature of 
fiction, Hawthorne is the typical romancer, while 
Thackeray is the typical novelist. Mr. Crawford has 
tried his hand at both species of fiction, not once but 
many times. In " Mr. Isaacs" he makes free use of 
the marvels of Oriental theosophy, treating seriously 
for the purposes of his art that which as a journalist 
he had made the butt of numberless flouts and gibes 
and jeers. In " The Witch of Prague " the plot turns 
on the latest theories of hypnotism and the far-reaching 
possibilities of a new psychological science. These 
are the most conspicuous instances, and the most 
successful by far, of an ability to construct a powerful 
and interesting story out of materials which in the 
hands of a less skilful writer would have produced 
only an effect oi grotesquerie or something much worse. 
It is a short step from the impressive and the thrilling 
to the ridiculous, and nothing is more fatal than to 
produce an effect of burlesque when one would be 
tragic. Mr. Crawford somehow compels us to take 
his marvels seriously while we are reading them, 
however we may scout them when we lay the book 
down, because he seems to take them with so tremen- 
dous seriousness himself. There is none of that 



FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 1 49 

cynical by-play of Thackeray's, in which we are now 
and again informed that we are only gazing on a 
puppet-show, not at life itself; no prestidigitateur 
ever kept up the illusion better, or more gravely pre- 
tended to his audience that his feats are the result, 
not of manual dexterity, but of mysterious powers 
with which he has been in some extraordinary way 
endowed. 

These romances are clever, perhaps they exhibit 
Mr. Crawford's cleverness at its best; for, surely, the 
more intrinsically improbable a tale is, the greater 
the skill of the story-teller who persuades 

His novels. 

us to accept it as real, even during the 
telling of it. Still, one may confess to a juster appre- 
ciation and a higher enjoyment of the novels in which 
only ordinary men and women appear, whose plots 
violate no man's notion of the probable, but adjust 
themselves readily to the experience of life each 
reader has gained. Some one has said of this work 
of Mr. Crawford's that it includes the best and the 
worst novel ever written by an American, — meaning 
by the best " Saracinesca," and by the worst " An 
American Politician." More readers will, perhaps, 
subscribe to the latter half of this saying than to the 
former. There have been, possibly, a few worse books 
than this story of American political life, — one does 
not care to inquire too curiously about that; but if so 
they must be very bad. The truth is, that in writing 
this story the novelist ventured out of his depth. No 
amount of cleverness can supply the place of knowl- 



150 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

edge, and Mr. Crawford does not know his own 
country and its ways. How, indeed, should he? He 
has never Hved here, — for any length of time, that is 
to say, — and he knows his countrymen only in a 
superficial, which is always a false, way. In " The 
Three Fates " he made a second venture in 

Two failures. 

this field, and again failed, — not quite so 
disastrously as before, it is true, but still failed. To 
be sure, the book was praised by a critic of some 
pretensions, as a felicitous picture of New York life. 
Mr. Crawford's New York friends should beseech him 
not to lay that flattering unction to his soul. It is not 
a picture of New York life, though as a travesty it 
may be allowed to be not without merit. But the 
author did not set out to write a travesty ; he aimed 
at portraiture. He did not succeed; he never will 
succeed until he knows America and things American 
as he knows Rome and the Romans. He is still a 
young man, and has ample time to make the acquain- 
tance of his countrymen. Let us hope that he will 
do so, and that he will then give us such studies of 
life in New York and Boston as he has given us of life 
in Rome. One is encouraged in this hope by a remark 
that he is credited with having lately made : " I think 
there is a richer field for the novelist in the United 
States than in Europe. There are more original 
characters to be found here, and they are in greater 
variety. " 

Mr. Crawford's Romans are convincing to one 
who knows nothing whatever about Rome, which 



FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 151 

means all but a few score of Americans. No trav- 
eller, not even one who spends months in Rome, can 
know enough about the city to say with Knows his 
authority that these books are or are not ^°"®' 
true to the life. To say that, one must know the 
city like a native. He must have the entree to the 
most exclusive society; he must have the personal 
confidence of people with whom most Americans 
never get so far as to exchange a word ; he must 
know their family hfe, their pleasures, their preju- 
dices, their very souls, in a word. For the acquiring 
of this knowledge Mr. Crawford had one qualification 
that is rare among American dwellers in Rome; 
though of Protestant parentage, sometime during 
his wanderings about the world he embraced the 
Roman Catholic religion, and is a devout son of 
the Church. It is not too much to say that no 
Protestant will ever be admitted to the intimate as- 
sociation with great Roman families that is apparent 
on every page of his three greatest novels. 

One risks no contradiction in applying this term 
to " Saracinesca," " Sant' Ilario," and " Don Orsino," 
— a trio of stories that no American novelist can be 
fairly said to have surpassed. One is almost inclined, 
in view of these three books, to modify a ^n unsurpassed 
little the opinion expressed concerning Mr. 
Howells, that he is easily the first of American nove- 
lists. First, he is, on the whole, beyond doubt, but 
not quite "easily;" it is no case of " Eclipse is first 
and the rest are nowhere," for, by virtue of these 



152 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

three books, Mr. Crawford is an uncommonly good 
second. And the elder novelist is first rather be- 
cause of the sustained excellence of his writings than 
because he has risen to any higher level. Mr. How- 
ells has written no novel that one would be willing to 
say is better than " Saracinesca," but Mr. Crawford 
has written many that are worse. 

These three books are the history of a patrician 
family of modern Rome, and together form a single 
story. The history begins with the Rome of '65 and 
ends about the year 1888, with a possibility of further 
development hereafter. Mr. Crawford is evidently 
TheSaraci- ^°^^ ^^ ViQX\ Orsino, has taken immense 
nescas. pains with his portraiture, and can hardly 

have taken leave of him for good. The young man 
is little more than twenty-one; he has just escaped 
ruin in those great building speculations after which 
Rome went mad for a time ; he has just passed through 
his first grand passion, — he is, in fine, far too inter- 
esting a personage, and his future contains too many 
delightful possibilities, for his creator to abandon 
him. In the mean time, some of us find his family 
even more delightful. The old Prince Saracinesca 
is positively delicious, and Corona, his daughter-in- 
law, is charming. It is among the highest society 
that the reader moves in these books ; for the time 
being he lives in great palaces, he assists at Embassy 
balls and other high " functions," he becomes a spec- 
tator at a duel between a prince and a count, he is 
admitted to a private audience with Cardinal Anto- 



FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 153 

nelli, he even has a glimpse of a revolution from the 
patrician point of view. When one comes to review 
the acquaintances he has made he finds among them 
all but two untitled men, — one a painter, the other 
an architect ; and the latter exists only to shield the 
name of his patrician partner from public view. And 
one can think of no higher praise to bestow on Mr. 
Crawford than to say that in all this he escapes the 
faintest taint of snobbery. Every reader of fiction 
will recall Lord Beaconsfield's " Lothair," and perhaps 
will remember even better Bret Harte's clever trav- 
esty of it in his " Condensed Novels." „ 

•^ Beaconsfield s 

Lord Beaconsfield also deals almost ex- lothair. 
clusively with dukes and earls and countesses, but in 
a way to suggest ignorance of the great people he 
described. His tawdry magnificence first amuses 
and finally disgusts the judicious reader. Mr. Craw- 
ford's is the antipodes of this style of writing. He 
chooses to write of princes, it is true, and of sur- 
roundings befitting their rank and wealth, but he 
describes them simply and easily, as if he had been 
familiar with them from his earliest years. And when 
he chooses he writes of other orders of Roman 
society with equal simplicity and fidelity. 

IV. 

Mr. Crawford avows that the ideal novel must 
be clean and sweet, if it is to tell its story to all 
mankind. This is the only manly creed, yet he 



154 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

avows it somewhat shamefacedly and with an ap- 
parent longing that it might be otherwise. We are, 
The school-girl ^6 says, men and women, and we have the 
arbiter. thoughts of men and women, and not of 

school-girls ; yet the school-girl practically decides 
what we are to hear at the theatre, and, so far as our 
language is concerned, determines to a great extent 
what we are to read. It is well for us all that Mr. 
Crawford has the school-girl usually in his mind's eye, 
if his " To Leeward " is a sample of what we may 
expect from our American novelists when they lose 
sight of the school-girl. It is very thin ice, indeed, 
that he skates over in this book, and the reader is 
relieved at the end to find that he has not broken 
through into a very slough of vileness. With this 
single exception Mr. Crawford's books may be safely 
commended virginibus puerisqiie. 

After all, is there not a good deal of humbug in 
that complaint of Thackeray's, echoed now and then 
by other novelists, that nobody nowadays dares to 
paint a man? — meaning, of course, a rake. The 
English and American tradition of decency is less of 
a restraint on the art of fiction than the French tradi- 
tion of indecency. And the French novelist has the 
excuse of a sort of necessity, while the English and 
American writer who is indecent is guilty of gratui- 
indecencyof ^o^s wallowing in filth. How does one 

French fiction. • ,• r j^i • i 1 • -v t. • 

justity this hard saymg? It is a very 
simple matter, and may be done in the squeezing of 
a lemon. The novel, as Mr. Crawford tells us, must 



FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 155 

deal mainly with the passion of love. The inter- 
course of English and American youths of both 
sexes is practically unrestrained, and their marriages 
are commonly preceded by a somewhat prolonged 
courtship and are founded on affection. Here is the 
amplest material for the art of the novelist. In 
French society, on the contrary, girls are brought 
up in the strictest seclusion, and marriages are ar- 
ranged by parents on a purely business basis. It 
may be true that these marriages turn out quite as 
well as those of England or America, — the revela- 
tions of our divorce courts strongly confirm those 
who so assert, — but it is evident that there is no 
material for romance in the French pre-matrimonial 
customs. The only passion of love from which the 
French novelist can extract dramatic situations and 
thrilling interest is a guilty passion, and this is why 
French fiction represents the breach of the a baseless 
seventh commandment as more honored ^'^'°'" 
than its observance. The English and American 
novelists have the advantage every way, and they 
speak to deaf ears when they ask our sympathy 
because of the hard condition under which they 
work, of showing some respect for the laws of God 
and the decencies of life. Mr. Crawford's instinct is 
better than his theory in regard to the dominance 
of the school-girl in fiction. 

The author of " Saracinesca" is one of the few 
living American writers who have a European repu- 
tation equal to their standing at home. His books 



156 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

have been translated into most of the languages of 
Europe, for the most part without his consent or 
A polyglot P''°^t- ^^^"S a polyglot himself, and 
writer. Speaking several languages as fluently 

as his own, he has accomplished one feat never 
paralleled by an American. His " Zoroaster " and 
" Marzio's Crucifix" he wrote in French as well as 
in English; and in recognition of their especial merit, 
and of the worth of his books in general, the French 
Academy a few years ago awarded him a prize of 
one thousand francs, — an honor as unique as it was 
well merited. 

Mr. Crawford has not yet reached the maturity of 
his po^^(ers, and we may fairly expect him to do much 
better work than he has yet done. His progress in 
art has been marked, and the past three years es- 
pecially have shown a great advance over what he 
has done before. He produces at a rate that would 

His future ^^ Tuinous to onc of less fertile mind and 
vigorous frame, but though his writing 
sometimes shows marks of haste, it is never raw 
and crude. He takes time to work out his concep- 
tions thoroughly before he puts pen to paper, and 
where that is done comparative rates of composi- 
tion are rather significant of idiosyncrasies of char- 
acter than tests of relative excellence. The best 
work is not infrequently done at furious speed, while 
that over which toilful hours are spent has often not 
life enough in it to save it from putrefaction. Still, 



FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD. 1 57 

Mr. Crawford's books lack the perfection of form 
that seldom is reached without long and loving labor. 
Let us hope that he may yet learn Michelangelo's 
secret that trifles make perfection, though perfection 
is no trifle. He is a man of genius, beyond question, 
and he has but to continue the progress he has 
already made to produce work that the world will 
never willingly let die. 



IX. 

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 

HAVE we, then, no women who are worthy of 
mention in the goodly company of American 
writers of to-day? the reader of these papers may 
ask. Yea, verily. Place mtx dames! They have 
been kept waiting far too long. The order of these 
studies is not intended to be taken as a judgment 
of comparative merit. The practice of classifying 
authors and ticketing them with their relative rank 
Unprofitable ^^ doubtless amusing to those who do it, 
criticism. ^^^ j^^y possibly bc instructive to others 

— though in a very different way from that intended 
by the ticketers — but it is scarcely more conclusive 
than debate on the ancient question, "Which is pre- 
ferable, summer or winter .-'" It is a sort of criti- 
cism that tells much more about the critic than 
about the authors criticised, and should be eschewed 
in self-protection. 

I. 

Probably nobody will dispute Mrs. Burnett's right 
to a high place among American writers on the ground 
that she is of English birth. Though a native of 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 1 59 

Manchester, and familiar with life in Lancashire, 
her parents came to this country while she was "a 
slip of a girl," before her character had 
taken form. Thus, while her early recol- 
lections have supplied her with literary material of 
which she has made good use, in sympathies and con- 
victions she is genuinely American, perhaps more 
ardent in her patriotism than many an "heir of all 
the ages, in the foremost files of time," — the 
proper description of a native American. American 
Whether exacting foreign critics admit '°''^^' 
that she is truly *' American " may be doubted, 
since she neither spells phonetically, nor deals in 
broad, exaggerated humor. We who have lived 
here all our lives, and are consequently so blinded 
by proximity to things American that we do not 
really see them as they are, may be pardoned for 
insisting that Mrs. Burnett is one of us. 

That Miss Hodgson should become an author 
seems to have been ordained from the beginning. 
In that charming autobiography of hers ■■ Lisped in 
which so delightfully entertained the °"™'=^''"-" 
readers of "Scribner's Magazine," under the title 
of "The One I Knew Best of All," — she tells us 
that from her earliest recollection she lived in an 
ideal world, and was an unconscious playwright 
and romancer even in the nursery. She could not 
see anybody who impressed her at all without 
making him or her a character in these dramas and 
romances, and inventing all sorts of deliciously 



l6o AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

impossible adventures for them. To set these on 
paper was no great exploit when she became a little 
older, and she scribbled tales and verses for her 
own amusement, with no thought of doing anything 
remarkable. Her mother was sensible enough, 
even when impressed by the talent of the child's 
performance, to suppress signs of gratification, so 
that the budding author escaped the conceit with 
\vhich the ordinary infant phenomenon is eaten up. 
While she was still in her "teens" Miss Hodgson 
began to write stories for publication, moved thereto 
by desire for fame perhaps, but still more, one con- 
jectures, by the prosaic desire to put money in her 
purse. In 1867 there were few periodicals to which 
a young writer could send stories with any prospect 
of payment, and when payment w-as received it was 
a sum that in these days would be considered ridi- 
culously small. It happened that "Peterson's 
Magazine " was the first to accept and print one of 
Miss Hodgson's stories, and thereafter she was for 
several years a quite regular contributor to that 
periodical. 

II. 

One of the chief objects that the founders of 
"Scribner's Monthly" proposed to themselves was 
Discovered by ^^^^ encouragcment of American litera- 
scnbners. turc, and amoug the most notable of their 
discoveries must be placed Mrs. Burnett. In 1S72 
her first story appeared in the magazine, — "Surly 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. l6l 

Tim's Troubles," — and it proved that the young 
author had become master of her powers, and was 
ready to do better work than the simple stories she 
had hitherto produced. A somewhat prolonged 
silence followed this publication, however, for 
another love had come to divide Frances Hodgson's 
affection for literature. In 1873 she was married 
to trtjan M. Burnett, M.D., then a rising physician 
of Knoxville, Tenn. Since 1875 their home has 
been in Washington, where Dr. Burnett has won an 
enviable reputation and practice as a specialist in 
diseases of the eye. He is in no danger, therefore, 
of being known to the world only as " the husband 
of Mrs. Burnett, the famous novelist, you know," 
which of all fates must be the most detestable to a 
man of any spirit or brains. 

Mrs. Burnett's pen was not idle while she was 
making trial of her new vocation of wife and 
mother; for in 1877 appeared "That Lass That Lasso* 
o' Lowrie's," having first had an honorable ^°'^"^^- 
career as a serial in "Scribner's Monthly." This 
gave the author her first real taste of fame, and the 
book was so great a success that more substantial 
reward was hers at once. From that time on the 
world has gone well with her, if a large bank 
account and the praise of men can make a woman 
happy. As each of her books has appeared, it has 
been greeted with a chorus of approbation, and even 
when the critics have doubted, as critics sometimes 
will, the public has stood by its favorite and bought 

11 



1 62 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

without a qualm of doubt. The later novels from 
her pen have been: "Haworth's" (1879), 

Later novels. 

"Louisiana" (1880), " A Fair Barbarian " 
(1881), and "Through One Administration" (1883). 
Popular as all these have been, none of them has 
quite equalled "That Lass o' Lowrie's" in the 
favor of the reading public. This has run through 
edition after edition, and still has a sale little 
diminished by the lapse of time. It well deserves 
this perennial favor. There is about the story a 
freshness, a keenness of observation, an accuracy of 
character-drawing almost photographic, and a charm 
of style that have been equalled in few American 
novels, and perhaps surpassed in none. The scene 
is in that Lancashire which was familiar to the 
author in her childhood, and therefore this is 
in a sense the least American of all her stories. In 
spite of this, the book took fast hold of American 
readers, and their first verdict is not likely ever to 
be reversed. 

Without being a partisan of any school of art, 
Mrs. Burnett was in this story a realist of the 
Realist by straitcst scct, — unconsciously so in part, 
instinct. j^Q doubt, for one cannot credit her with 

having a theory to serve. She set out to tell a 
story true to the life she had herself observed, and 
she peopled her book with such men and women as 
she had actually known. She tells us, in the auto- 
biography to which reference has already been 
madCj how the heroine was suggested to her, — the 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 1 63 

face of a girl whom she once met and of whom she 
knew nothing, haunting her for years, and irre- 
sistibly suggesting a train of adventures that must 
at some time get themselves written down. But 
while fancy thus supplied the warp of the tale, 
actual minute observation formed its woof. The 
people of this book are real people; they have been 
studied from life by one who has a wonderful faculty 
of close observation, an indelible memory, and an 
exceptional power of conveying to her readers what 
she has seen. 

Mrs. Burnett also showed in this book — she had 
given us glimpses of the fact before — that she is 
one of the chosen few who have the Her gift of 
innate faculty of expression. It is as ^'^'^ 
impossible to say in what consists the gift of style 
as to define the perfume of the rose or the har- 
monies of Beethoven. It is incommunicable, it 
defies analysis, it can only be felt and enjoyed. It 
is not essential to the making of a successful or 
even a great novelist, — witness Dickens, Reade, 
and Collins, men of great gifts as writers of fiction, 
differing wonderfully in method and effect, but 
alike in that none of them was ever able to write a 
page that one would read a second time for its 
charm, while they became insufferable whenever 
they tried to do a bit of really fine writing. But 
whatever Mrs. Burnett writes is worth reading, 
quite apart from its matter, for the manner in 
which she says things. Her books would be enjoy- 



1 64 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

able in a way, if they violated every canon of the art 
of fiction. Though she were to write nonsense we 
should still read, merely to see how delightfully it 
is possible for a writer to say foolish nothings. But 
she does not write nonsense, — quite the contrary. 
The praise she has received has not disturbed h^r 
mental equilibrium, and has never betrayed her 
into a display of illusory omniscience. Womanly 
as ever, painstaking in her art, not concealing her 
natural pleasure at her success, but not unduly 
elated by it, she has gone on with her work, each 
year enlarging her fame and gaining fresh laurels. 
For if the critic agree with the verdict of the 
public, that on the whole she has never surpassed 
and perhaps never equalled her first great success, 
each subsequent volume has shown her mastery of 
the art of fiction, and has displayed it in a different 
field, adding to the first triumph a series of lesser 
conquests, and demonstrating the breadth of her 
knowledge, her sympathy, her humanity. 

III. 

A GREATER triumph than she had won in her 
books for grown-up people was in store for Mrs. 
Burnett when she began to write for the little folks. 
Little Lord The cxploits and sayings of one of her 
Fauntieroy. ^^^ ^^^g suggcstcd to her thc story of 
"Little Lord Fauntieroy" (1886), which was, with- 
out question, the most successful book for children 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT, 165 

ever written by an American. It extended the 
author's fame more than another sort of book could 
have spread it, for in capturing the hearts of the 
little ones she won those of fathers and mothers 
the whole country over; and thousands who would 
never have heard of the author of "That Lass o' 
Lowrie's " feel themselves on terms of familiar 
acquaintance with the author of " Little Lord 
Fauntleroy." 

On the whole, the book must be pronounced more 
successful as an article of commerce than as a 
work of art. It has but one defect, to Faultily fauit- 
be sure, but that is most serious, abso- '^^^ 
lutely fatal in fact, — the hero of the tale is too 
faultily faultless. There surely never was a live 
boy, since boys first were, so absolutely perfect as 
Fauntleroy. The best boy in the world sometimes 
tears his clothes, musses his hair, has fits of ill- 
temper, and fails of perfect obedience and unsel- 
fishness. But Fauntleroy is without any of these 
failings ; he is always irreproachably dressed, ex- 
quisitely polite, and his conduct is without a flaw. 
He reminds one of that nursery heroine, the little 
girl who — 

" When she was good she was very, very good, 
And when she was bad she was horrid ; " 

only, he reminds us solely of the first half of her 
character, for he is never bad by any chance or 
mischance. He is so very, very good, indeed, that 



l66 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

he is not quite human. We must take him, not for 
a picture of a real boy, but for the author's ideal of 
what a boy ought to be. Masculine critics may, 
perhaps, be pardoned for saying that the ideal 
lacks something. Fauntleroy is far too much of a 
mamma's darling; he just comes short of being a 
prig, — comes short by so narrow a space that it may 
be questioned if he does not sometimes overstep the 
line. In spite of her faculty of observation, her 
sympathetic quality as an artist, and her experience 
of motherhood, Mrs. Burnett has not quite plucked 
the heart out of the mystery of boy nature, and a 
little dash of masculine roughness, a soup^on of 
naughtiness, would have made Fauntleroy more 
human. And though this might have lessened his 
attractiveness to fond mammas, the not less fond 
papas would have had less difficulty in recognizing 
the picture. 

It is not to be considered remarkable that, from the 
appearance of the first instalment of this story in 
Adored by the "St. Nicholas " to its publication in book 
children. form, thc interest of readers should have 

been continuous and even increasing. The story is 
told with the perfection of art; the author's charm 
of style was never more apparent than in this book. 
The children, who were her chief readers at first, 
might not have been fully conscious of this charm, 
though they doubtless felt its power, but their 
elders were more intelligently, yet hardly more 
heartily, appreciative. Since then Mrs. Burnett 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 167 

has been sure of her audience among either old or 
young in America whenever she cared to break 
silence. Several books for children have succeeded 
the story of Fauntleroy, such as "Sarah other books 

for young 

Crewe," "Little Saint Elizabeth" and readers. 
other stories, and "Giovanni and the Other." Had 
these books not been obliged to undergo comparison 
with her first extraordinary success, they might have 
been pronounced excellent; under the circumstances 
they have probably been something of a disappoint- 
ment to her public. The public always expects 
that an author, having once struck twelve, should 
go on striking twelve indefinitely, and even lazily 
wonders why he does not strike thirteen. The 
demand is unreasonable, but since it exists authors 
must submit to be judged by readers who have this 
prepossession. One must either go on record, like 
"Single-speech Hamilton," as the writer of one 
brilliantly successful book, or be content to have 
all subsequent writings declared to be inferior to 
that by which he first gained reputation. It will 
be a generation or two hence before just notions are 
entertained, not merely regarding the relative rank 
of living authors, but the relative value and signifi- 
cance of each writer's books. This at least is to be 
said now for Mrs. Burnett's later children's books: 
they are, from the artist's point of view, superior 
to the more popular Fauntleroy, because truer to 
life. She understands girls, and her girls are much 
more human than her impossible boy hero. This is 



1 68 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

not the popular verdict, but one is persuaded that it 
will be the ultimate judgment alike of readers and 
of critics. 

IV. 

Comparatively few of our American writers of 
fiction, as has already been noted, have won success 
A dramatic ^^ ^hc stagc. How far Mrs. Burnett has 
success. j^^^ |.j^g assistance of more experienced 

playwrights, one cannot say, but such collaboration 
could in no case have extended beyond those techni- 
calities that are pitfalls for the unwary. Her plays 
have been adaptations of her most successful stories, 
and their stage success has equalled, perhaps sur- 
passed, their vogue in print. This has been due in 
the main to their intrinsic merits, but in one case 
an extraordinary " run " was due to the fortunate 
production of the play. One refers, of course, to 
the dramatization of Fauntleroy's story. By good 
chance the manager who produced the play lighted 
upon a very bright and charming little girl, of phe- 
nomenal dramatic gifts, to take the leading part in 
the play. She dressed and acted the part of 
Fauntleroy to perfection, and succeeded in divest- 
ing the character of that unreal air which mars the 
perfection of the story. The living Fauntleroy 
seemed more human, less priggish; the art of the 
little actress was convincing, where the art of the 
novelist had failed to convince. 

No doubt this dramatic success has been gratify- 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 169 

ing to the author, because it brought her a wider 
and well-deserved fame, and still more because it 
has made her, comparatively speaking, 

T-.1 1 r 1 Its reward. 

a rich woman. The rewards of author- 
ship are not excessive, even in the case of the most 
fortunate; lawyers or physicians of medium abilities 
may be named by the score, in any one of our great 
cities, whose yearly income far surpasses that of 
the best paid man of letters in the United States. 
When any one of the profession, therefore, gets 
something like his due reward, it is cause for 
general rejoicing in the craft, not for jealousy and 
gnashing of teeth. Every such success brings nearer 
the day when the profession of letters will be as 
well paid, for work of the same grade, as the pro- 
fessions of medicine or the law; when the salary of 
a millionnaire's cook will not exceed the copyright 
value of a work that from the day of its publication 
takes its place among American classics. 

Mrs. Burnett's dramatic success had one result 
for which all who favor pure and innocent amuse- 
ments may well be grateful. Many people 
who had never entered a theatre in their 
lives went to see Fauntleroy, overcome by the per- 
suasion of their children, and "snatched a fearful 
joy " in the playhouse, half-persuaded still that they 
were committing a deadly sin. They were shown 
by the most effective of object lessons that the 
stage is not necessarily the corrupt and corrupting 
thing they had been taught to believe it to be, — 



I/O AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

that it may be made, not merely innocent and amus- 
ing, but elevating and ennobling. If good people 
applied to books the logic they apply to the stage, 
if they refused to read any books because so many 
bad books are printed, there would soon be no 
readers but the vicious and the vile, and so in a 
little while only bad books would be made. Mrs. 
Burnett's little play was a missionary force that did 
wonders in the breaking down of almost invincible 
prejudice founded on ignorance and misinformation. 
It is a curious fact that though she lived for ten 
years, ten years of the most impressionable part of 
Her ignoring of ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ Tenncssec, the work of Mrs. 
Tennessee. Bumctt bcars almost no trace of this ex- 
perience. One would think that she must know the 
Tennessee folk as well as Miss Murfree, but her 
books are concerned almost wholly with the Lan- 
cashire of her childhood, or the American cities in 
which her maturer years have been spent. One 
can hardly account for her ignoring of this rich 
material, for she was in the field and had made a 
name for herself before Miss Murfree, and there 
was no question of another's priority to hold her in 
check. It may be, for Mrs. Burnett should have 
many years of literary work before her, that in 
some future romance this mine may be worked by 
her, and that we shall be made richer by acquaint- 
ance with some Joan of Tennessee. At any rate, 
we are warranted in expecting from her greater 
things than she has yet done. 



X. 

CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK. 

VETERAN readers of the "Atlantic," when 
they cut the leaves of the number for May, 
1878, had a fresh sensation. In the "Contents" 
on the familiar yellow cover they read, " The Dancin' 
Party at Harrison's Cove, by Charles Egbert Crad- 
dock. " The title and the name suggested 

The first story. 

little, — the name was absolutely new to 
every reader, — but those who read the story found 
that the writer had opened an entirely fresh vein in 
American literature. Harrison's Cove, it turned out, 
was a settlement among the mountains of Tennessee, 
now first made known to the world at large; and 
the story was concerned with the fortunes of a type 
of mankind quite new to literature. 

From time to time other stories appeared from 
the same writer. Their merit was recognized, and 
the name of Craddock was enrolled on the list of 
our rising authors. Finally, in 1884, eight of 
these tales were gathered into a volume lutheXen- 

nessee Moun- 

inscnbed with the title. In the Ten- taius. 
nessee Mountains." On a copy of this book, printed 
in 1892, one finds the legend, dear to the heart of 



172 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

authors, "Twenty-second edition." To be sure, 
"edition" means little or much in the American 
trade, but in this case it is understood to mean one 
thousand copies. The author whose first book sells 
at this rate evidently has the game in his hands. 

So far, singularly little was known of the writer 
of these tales. The fact became public after a 
Themysteri- whilc thatCharlcs Egbert Craddock was 
ous author. ^ pscudonym, and that the writer's real 
name was M. N. Murfree, but this was just enough 
light to make the darkness visible. Neither editor 
nor publisher had any acquaintance with him save 
by letter. No other American author knew any- 
thing about him. His post-office address was St. 
Louis, and it was evident that he must at some 
time have lived among the folk and the scenes that 
he described so graphically; but beyond this 
nobody had any information. Handwriting, accord- 
ing to Poe and others, is an infallible index of 
character. Mr. Craddock's chirography would have 
indicated to any interpreter a bold, masculine, 
adventurous nature, — it was so free, so decided, so 
heavy. Indeed, the expenditure of ink is so lavish 
as to suggest that the writer used the sharp end of 
a stick, a la John Chinaman, instead of a pen, for 
no goose ever hatched, one would think, could 
furnish a quill capable of such execution. Mr. 
Aldrich, then editor of the "Atlantic," used to 
crack his jokes on this peculiarity. "I wonder," 
he remarked one day, " if Craddock has laid in his 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK ly^ 

winter's ink; perhaps we could get a serial from 
him." 

What was the sensation one spring day in 1885 
when there walked into the editorial office of the 
"Atlantic" a demure young woman who The mystery 
announced herself as Charles Egbert Crad- ^^^°^^ ■ 
dock ! The proverbial feather would have knocked 
down everybody, from editor-in-chief to office 
cat. A Southern girl in her twenties had fooled 
the 'cuteness of all Yankeedom, and brought to 
naught the critics with their boasted insight, and 
their wonderful gift of determining all sorts of 
obscure matters by internal evidence. Beginning 
with Mr. Aldrich, or even with Mr. Howells before 
him, and going on down to the smallest newspaper 
scribbler, they were all her victims. Not one of 
them had divined that Charles Egbert Craddock was 
other than he seemed. 

This was a more notable achievement than appears 
on the face of the facts. One of the best kept 
literary secrets of the century was the authorship 
of "Scenes of Clerical Life" and "Adam surpasses 
Bede." Special pains were taken to keep George Ehot. 
the public in the dark. For some time even Mr. 
John Blackwood, the editor who accepted the tales 
for his magazine, and the publisher who afterwards 
issued them in book form, was as much mystified 
as anybody. He was so completely taken in by the 
pseudonym that he addressed letters to the author, 
under care of Lewes, as "My dear George." To 



174 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

be sure, Mr. Aldrich with his " My dear Craddock," 
quite duplicated this performance; but from the 
very first there were those who divined the secret 
of George Eliot, though, of course, they could not 
accurately fix the personality. When the first story 
appeared, Dickens suspected the author to be a 
woman, while Thackeray and Mrs. Oliphant were 
certain that such was the case. But no happy 
instinct led anybody to guess the secret of Charles 
Egbert Craddock. The name was not even sus- 
pected of being a pseudonym until this was con- 
fessed, and when so much was admitted, nobody 
suspected that anything remained to be cleared up. 
The author had no need of lying, as the author of 
" Waverley " had, to silence prying questioners, — 
there were none, since Mr Craddock-Murfree was 
accepted everywhere at his own valuation. A fur- 
ther element of triumph consisted in the fact that 
George Eliot's hand was forced by a rival claimant 
to the authorship of her books, else the attempt to 
keep the secret might have continued ; but the author 
of the Craddock tales made her incognito good until 
she no longer cared to conceal her identity, and 
she chose her own time and place for a dramatic 
denouement. 



The story was, of course, too good to keep, and 
the identity of the already popular author was made 
known to the world. From that time, though the 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK. 175 

pseudonym still appears on title pages and in cata- 
logues, the author has been best known under her 
own proper cognomen. With the transpiring of the 
secret a few biographical details were also made 
public, though they are rather scanty. 

Mary Noailles Murfree comes of the best Ameri- 
can stock. Her great-grandfather, Hardy Murfree, 
was a native of North Carolina, and a 

Her lineage. 

gallant soldier in the War of the Revolu- 
tion. He was a subordinate of Mad Anthony 
Wayne at the storming of Stony Point, — the most 
brilliant action of the whole war, on either side, — 
and bore himself honorably in many another con- 
test, rising to the rank of colonel before peace was 
declared. In 1807 he emigrated to the new State 
of Tennessee, and settled near the present town of 
Murfreesboro, which was named in his honor. Miss 
Murfree was born at the family estate, Grantlands, 
near Murfreesboro. It is said that while quite 
young she suffered the misfortune of a stroke of 
paralysis, which rendered her lame for life. She 
was thus debarred from the active life and open-air 
sports of other children, and turned for consolation 
to books, becoming an eager student and omni- 
vorous reader. The Civil War reduced the family 
fortunes, and shortly after its close her father re- 
moved to St. Louis, where he engaged in the 
practice of law. 

This is about all that is known to the public of 
this author's life; for the rest we are dependent 



176 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

chiefly on conjecture and the internal evidence 
afforded by her books. It is, perhaps, a fair infer- 
ence that a desire for the emoluments of literature, 
rather than for its fame, influenced Miss Murfree 
in her first efforts. Dr. Johnson once said some- 
thing to the effect that nobody but a fool ever wrote 
anything except for pay, but this is not one of the 
wisest sayings of old Ursa Major. Doubtless the 
need of bread and butter has, in modern times at 
least, produced more literature than ambition, but 
if that were the only motive it would be a bread- 
Aconscien- aud-buttcr literature that would be pro- 
tious worker. ^^^^j_ Though Johnsou's sayiug was 

obviously a hasty generalization founded on imper- 
fect induction, and is not to be taken mi pied de 
lettre, it contains more than a modicum of truth. 
What Miss Murfree' s books warrant us in conclud- 
ing is that, from whatever motive she began her 
writing, she has continued because she loves her 
calling, and takes honest pride in doing her work 
well, irrespective of the reward. Conscientious 
workmanship can never be mistaken, and its signi- 
ficance is great. No merely mercenary writer can 
be an artist in words. There is no reason why he 
should be. The annals of modern literature are full 
of instances of sudden reputation won, and great 
gains made by men and women who were no more 
novelists than a negro kalsominer is a painter. If 
one writes to make money only or chiefly, the thing 
to do i§ to set up a literary mill and grind out books 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK, 1 77 

by the bushel, like — but every instructed reader 
can name half a dozen such without hesitation. 

Miss Murfree's workmanship is admirable, in the 
first instance, because she writes from adequate 
knowledge of her subject. She knows the Thorough 
Tennessee mountains and the Tennessee ^""^'^"^e^- 
people thoroughly. She has not merely mastered 
their surface peculiarities, such as their dialect, 
their dress, their mode of life, but she has seen to 
the bottom of their souls, and knows their inner 
life as well as the outer. She has not only seen, 
she has analyzed, combined, classified, interpreted 
her facts until she fully comprehends them in all 
their relations. If she had been a devotee of real- 
ism she might have ended with seeing and describ- 
ing; as it is, while truly realistic, with a sharpness 
of detail almost photographic, in her fidelity to fact 
she does not forget the higher truth of being, and 
so she both understands her people and makes us 
understand them likewise. 

But this knowledge is not enough for a novelist, 
or, rather, it is not possible without the previous 
acquisition of other knowledge, or, still Depth of in- 
again, if its acquirement is possible, it ^'^''*" 
cannot be successfully communciated to others ; its 
real nature cannot even be grasped fully by one other- 
wise untutored. There are scores in the Tennessee 
mountains who know all that Miss Murfree could 
see there, know it more completely, perhaps, and 
have made it much more a part of themselves, but 



178 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY 

they could never tell it to the world; in a sense, 
and a very real sense, they may be said not actually 
to know it, for they do not know it in relation to 
other knowledges. Miss Murfree brought with her 
to the mountains and the mountain folk, the power 
of seeing more than an ordinary observer could find 
in either. She brought a cultivated mind, made 
impressible by natural and spiritual beauty through 
the study of nature, of literature, of life. Those 
long early years of reading and meditation had not 
been in vain. None see so deeply into the heart of 
things as those who have been in a measure secluded 
from the world, and have had as the instructors of 
their working hours and their companions in idle- 
ness the choicest minds of all ages. 



II. 

Miss Murfree began her work, we have already 
seen, as a writer of short stories, but her continu- 
ance in this province was brief. Since 

Short stories. r a -i 1 '-t-> 

the publication of In the Tennessee 
Mountains," if one remembers correctly, she has 
never tried this kind of writing again. Probably 
we owe her early tales to the same cause that im- 
pelled the disguise of a pseudonym, — a lack of 
confidence in her powers, and a wish to make 
experiment in a modest way before attempting an 
ambitious enterprise. Her instinct must have told 
her very soon, however, that she had nothing to 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK. 1 79 

fear, and also must have assured her that she was 
wasting her material in the composition of these 
tales. Several of them, though they seem at first 
reading to reach the height of excellence just as 
they are, on analysis disclose the fact that they are 
not so much complete tales as abbreviated novels. 
This is especially true of " Drifting Down Lost 
Creek," into which enough of plot and character is 
crowded to furnish forth a novel of full length. 
The skeleton is there complete, and only needs to 
be clothed with flesh, that is to say, with dialogue 
and description, to make a book equal in interest 
and power to any of the author's later writing. In 
the perfect short story the length of the tale is 
exactly proportioned to its content, and to expand 
it to the dimensions of a novel would make of it an 
intolerable wishy-washy dilution. Though we find 
a defect in some of these stories, it must be 
admitted that it is a fault that leans to virtue's 
side. Not much literary work, in these days, can 
be called imperfect because of its excess of riches. 

It did seem, however, on her first trial of a longer 
flight, that a good writer of tales had been spoiled 
to make a poor novelist. Not that there very like a 
were no good points in " Where the Battle *^''"''^" 
was Fought" (Boston, 1884); Miss Murfree could 
not, if she tried, write a book without solid merits. 
The book simply was not so good as we had a right 
to expect. Her tales had been as vigorous, as 
sinewy, as wholesome as her mountaineers. This 



l8o AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

was a novel of the conventional sort, with a plot of 
the well-worn type, and lacked the characteristic 
Craddock flavor, A wish to show that she could 
write about something else than the mountain 
people may have caused the author to make this 
mis step. Doubtless she can write about many 
other things, but doubtless she can write of nothing 
about which her public would so willingly hear. 
The scenes and types of her stories brought the 
piquant and titillating flavor of absolute novelty to 
the jaded palate of the novel reader; and though 
the taste is now familiar, it has lost none of its 
savor. Still less was there danger ten years ago 
that the public would quickly tire of the mountains 
and their quaint men and women. 

Miss Murfree is not one of those who cannot 
learn in the school of experience, and she has never 
repeated that mistake. From that time on, in 
regular succession her books have come from the 
press showing a steady growth in artistic power. 
First came "Down the Ravine " (188O, fol- 

Her books. ^ /" 

lowed in the same year by "The Prophet 
of the Great Smoky Mountains," and at slightly 
longer intervals by "In the Clouds" (1886), "The 
Story of Keedon Bluffs" (1887), "The Despot of 
Brownsedge Cove" (1888), and "In the 'Stranger 
People's Country" (New York, 1891). This is 
pretty rapid production, but not too rapid for good 
workmanship, as the books themselves prove, and 
as is proved by the example of numerous other 



CHARLES EGBERT CR AD DOCK. l8l 

novelists, American and foreign. Slow composi- 
tion does not necessarily produce work of a high 
quality; comparative rates of production are a test 
of temperament and industry rather than of excel- 
lence. There is no "scamped" work in Miss 
Murfree's books. She produces rapidly but not 
hurriedly, and no signs of slipshod or careless per 
formance are traceable in any of her writing. So 
long as she keeps up to the mark she has set for 
herself, and thus far reached without one failure — 
for "Where the Battle was Fought," so far as it may 
be called a failure, failed because of an unwise 
choice of theme, not by lack of faithful labor — the 
more books she gives her readers the more she will 
gratify the most critical among them. 

III. 

* 

Four things go to the making of a good novel : 
plot, dialogue, description, style. There may be 
other things, but these are the chief, and novelists 
differ from each other mainly in the relative impor- 
tance they assign to these four elements and their 
relative skill in the use of them. Few writers are 
really great in more than two of these four things, 
and are fortunate not to fall below mediocrity in 
one or more of them. 

Miss Murfree is Jiot remarkable for the strength 
or interest of her plots; the best we can say of 
them is that they answer her purposes, and do not 



1 82 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



impress the reader as unpleasantly weak. She is 
to be praised in that, not having a genius for in- 
vention, she has risen above the temp- 
Plot. , . . „ , , T 

tation to strain after effects she could not 

gain. It is a rare grace in a writer to be content 
to remain simply natural, and that grace she has. 

In the matter of dialogue, also, the critic must 
give Miss Murfree a curiously qualified commenda- 
tion: she both reaches and falls short of 

Dialogue. 

the highest excellence. Here, too, she 
is found to be natural, which in a sense is the 
highest praise that could be spoken of any writer. 
But her characters are uncultivated people; they 
come of a race distinguished for rugged strength 
rather than for grace; to endow them with wit and 
humor, — save of the primitive kind, — with reflect- 
iveness, with philosophic insight, would have been 
to make them caricatures of the rugged and uncouth 
mountaineer. By the nature of her subject-matter 
the author precluded herself from brilliancy of 
dialogue. Keen dialect, the fine play of fancy, 
lambent humor, scintillating wit, quotation and 
allusion, — all the mental charms we associate with 
high culture, — are out of the question in her books. 
For these we must go to Howells, or James, or 
Crawford. It is a necessity of the situation, and 
by the deliberate restraint Miss Murfree has put 
upon herself in this matter she shows an art far 
higher than she would have shown by yielding to 
the temptation to display her abilities. 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK. 183 

It is in description alone that the author has 
been free to give full scope to her literary skill. 
In the first story of the "Atlantic" series 

Description. 

there was a taste of her quality, in this 
picture of an August sky : " An early moon was 
riding, clear and full, over this wild spur of the 
Alleghanies; the stars were few and very faint; 
even the great Scorpio lurked, vaguely outlined, 
above the wooded ranges; and the white mist, that 
filled the long, deep, narrow valley between the 
parallel lines of mountains, shimmered with opal- 
escent gleams. " Miss Murfree has gone on culti- 
vating her gift, until in her last books it comes 
very near absolute perfection. She accomplishes 
some feats that are almost incredible. Who would 
have believed it possible, for instance, that the 
fleeting effects of light and shade caused by the 
passage of a cloud could be expressed in anything 
save the colors of a painter's palette, if he had not 
read this : " His eyes were on the stretch of barley, 
bending and swaying as the wind swept through its 
pliant blades, and shoaling from an argentine glister 
to green, and from green again to elusive silver 
glintings — what time the cove below was dark and 
purple and blurred, as a great white cloud hung, 
dazzling and opaque, high, high in the sky, and, as 
it passed, the valley grew gradually into distinct- 
ness again, with the privilege of the sunshine and 
the freedom of the wind, and all its land-marks 
asserted anew." Here is a scene equally fine: "He 



1 84 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

turned and looked at the gorge, as if he expected to 
see there the pearly disk among the dark obscure- 
ments of the night-shadowed mountains. It was 
instead a vista of many gleaming lights; the sun- 
shine on the river, and the differing lustre of the 
water in the shadow; the fine crystalline green of 
the cataract, and the dazzling white of the foam and 
the spray; the luminous azure of the far-away peaks, 
and the enamelled glister of the blue sky, — all 
showing between the gloomy, sombre ranges close 
at hand." 

Pages of such bits might be extracted from 
these later books. And yet it should not be in- 
ferred that the author has fallen a victim to her 
acquired facility, and bores her reader with passages 
inserted for mere display. Few writers show a 
better appreciation of the shrewd saying of the 
sententious Hobbes: "For words are wise men's 
counters, — they do but reckon by them ; but they 
No purple ^^^ ^^^ moncy of fools." In every case, 
patches. these bits of landscape are fitted into the 

story so deftly as to be an inseparable part of it; 
they accompany and explain the acts and moods of 
the characters so as to justify their place in the 
text, and are no purple patches clumsily stitched 
on as an afterthought. Surely, such writing as 
the above bits fairly represent is entitled to the 
much-abused and sadly vulgarized phrase "word- 
painting." 

It is no violent transition, certainly, to a general 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK. 185 

consideration of Miss Murfree's style. Simplicity, 
correctness, and grace are its character- 

' ^ Style. 

istics. It is true that these adjectives 
apply only when the author has not her dialect fit 
on; mountainese and pure English are necessarily 
incompatible. But it must be said, in justice to 
her, that her dialect is quite as clever as her 
ordinary English style; it is not exaggerated or 
overdone, and the conventional orthography is not 
unnecessarily mangled. There are strange muta- 
tions in writing as well as in dress, and literary 
fashions change with quite as much bewildering 
rapidity and quite as little reasonableness as the 
fashions in millinery. The rationale of fashion is 
a deep subject, — if one may predicate rationality 
of anything whose origin seems to be in utter 
mental vacuousness, — and we are concerned at 
present only with its phenomena. An unreason- 
ing vogue of dialect a few years ago has been suc- 
ceeded by a prejudice against dialect, that would 
be quite as unreasonable had not the reading public 
been surfeited by the deluge of dialect stories pro- 
duced by its first eager patronage. But there isi 
dialect and dialect. Miss Murfree's is of the best; 
and, in any case, it is hard to see how she could 
have written of her mountaineers on any other 
terms. Certainly, if she was to represent them as 
they are, she must set them before us with their 
peculiar speech. The only question that can fairly 
be raised in this case is whether it was worth while 



1 86 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

for Miss Murfree to write stories about the Tennessee 
mountains at all. As to that, but one verdict can 
be expected of her readers. If there are any who 
think otherwise, the world of letters is all before 
them where to choose. 

We could ill spare Miss Murfree' s contribution 
to fiction. It is racy of the soil. The most exact- 
ing among our British censors will not venture to 
deny to her books the right to the distinctive 
epithet, American. 



XI. 

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 

LORD BYRON once said, in describing the sudden 
fame that came to him from the publication of 
the first part of " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," " I 
awoke next morning and found myself famous." 
There was almost as much truth as hyperbole in the 
saying, and the same remark might have been made 
by the author of " The Gates Ajar." When that book 
first appeared, more than twenty-five years ago, it 
attained a popularity of the most extensive and im- 
pressive sort. There were some weeks, according 
to the story told of it by its publisher, when the 
fate of the book seemed trembling in the 

Sudden fame. 

balance ; then all at once the sales showed 
a phenomenal increase, and advanced by leaps and 
bounds. Twenty editions were sold within a single 
year. The book was on every table, and its discussion 
was on every lip. The furore it caused was even 
greater than that provoked recently by the publication 
of " Robert Elsmere." The theology underlying the 
book was ardently defended by some and fiercely 
criticised by others. Long articles were written against 
it in the religious newspapers, and ministers made it 



1 88 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

the theme of sermons, mostly minatory and anathema- 
breathing, and dreadful things were said of the author's 
heterodoxy. It was, in short, one of the notable 
literary successes of our time ; and whatever one may 
think of the book, now that a quarter-century has 
passed away, and the time for a cool judgment has 
come, it still remains a literary success of the first 

magnitude. 

« 

I. 

Now, notwithstanding Dogberry's obiter dictum 
that " reading and writing come by nature," nothing 
is more certain than the fact that a book of this kind 
does not get itself written by accident. Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps, when she wrote " The Gates Ajar," 
had served an apprenticeship of some length in litera- 
ture. She began to write for the press at 

A born author. _ 

thirteen years of age, and was already the 
author of a dozen volumes, stories for children mostly, 
of the usual Sunday-school type — no, of an unusual 
type. She was the daughter of Austin Phelps, the 
instructor of Andover theologues for forty years in 
sacred rhetoric, and the writer of a small library of 
books whose brilliant- and pungent style has been 
admired by two generations of readers. Her mother 
was Elizabeth Stuart, — daughter of Moses Stuart, 
another name inseparably connected with the history 
of Andover, — herself the author of many books, 
mostly fiction with a religious motive. Miss Phelps 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 189 

thus breathed the atmosphere of letters from her in- 
fancy, and alike by inherited instindt and by careful 
training was fitted for a literary career. That she 
should begin one was to be expected ; that she should 
be successful it was perhaps equally safe to prophesy; 
what nobody could have foreseen, herself least of all 
probably, was that when she had barely arrived at the 
dignity of young-ladyhood she should become one of 
the most famous of American authors. This was in 
part, to be sure, the result of good fortune, but it was 
also the reward of earnest endeavor and conscientious 
literary workmanship. 

It is something of a puzzle to one who now reads 
"The Gates Ajar " for the first time, and even to one 
who re-reads it after many years, to understand the 
secret of its immediate and wide and enduring popu- 
larity. It is not a novel, and it is not a The Gates 
religious treatise, but something half-way ^^^' 
between the two. It might be described as a sort of 
prose " In Memoriam " with a thread of story. In the 
form of a diary it gives the meditations and expe- 
riences of a young woman who has lately lost a 
brother to whom she was tenderly attached. The 
divine purposes in the affliction of men, the discipline 
of sorrow, the grounds of faith in immortality, the 
nature of the future life, especially the latter, are the 
themes to which attention is chiefly directed. These 
are not subjects that might be expected to rouse 
general interest. The a priori reasoner would have 
been likely to forecast disaster, or at best a very 



190 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

moderate success, for any book that discussed ques- 
tions of this nature; and in the present day he might 
be right. The conditions were different, however, 
twenty-five years ago. As is the case with all greatly 
successful books, "The Gates Ajar" struck a chord 
in the people's hearts that only needed the touch of a 
Its appeal to master's hand to respond. It appeared soon 
the heart. after the Civil War, when in almost every 
household there was still mourning for some loved 
and lost one. Tens of thousands of sore hearts were 
asking themselves just the questions that the supposi- 
titious writer of this book kept asking. If Miss Phelps 
did not give a final reply to these questionings, she 
helped many to a stronger faith in the reality and 
blessedness of the future life, and a hope of reunion 
with the lost, — a reunion that should be conscious, 
intelligent, and blissful, as well as unending. She 
essayed, and with much success, — 

" To pluck the amaranthine flower 
Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind 
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, 
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind." 

No wonder, therefore, the book found readers ; the 
seed fell into good soil, already prepared for it, and 
that it should germinate and fructify was in the ordi- 
nary course of nature. 

But the book owed its great vogue to another cause, 
that no longer exists. In the sixties what passed for 
orthodox theology was practically silent about the 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 191 

future life. Beyond maintaining with great energy 
the immortahty of the soul and the eternal ohmpsesofthe 
punishment of the wicked, it practically ^■'«"' "'°'-''^- 
ignored all the questions that cluster about the word 
" eschatology." Not only was theology silent on these 
themes, but the pulpit was likewise dumb. Yet the 
people were anxiously questioning and doubting, and 
from the source to which they might naturally have 
turned for light they met with chilling silence or stern 
rebuke. " The Gates Ajar " boldly attacked problems 
that the pulpits and theological chairs feared or 
ignored, and while it did not say the last word on 
any of them, it did in many cases say what was to 
most people the first word of comfort they had ever 
heard. 

These papers are not theological disquisitions, and 
it is not necessary, therefore, to discuss the grave 
question whether this book is, as has been so often 
charged, " tainted with Swedenborgianism." it^ » sweden- 
What is taken for Swedenborgianism in °''s'anisms. 
the book of Miss Phelps, by those who interpret every- 
thing with absolute literalism, is probably nothing 
more than a speaking in parables on her part. When 
she says, for instance, that the saints will have pianos 
in heaven, only the literal-minded will mistake her 
meaning, — such people as cannot appreciate humor 
and need to have all their poetry translated into bald 
prose before it is level to their intellects. In the 
Revelation we read of harps in heaven, and if the harp 
of the first century, why not the pianoforte of the 



192 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

nineteenth? Things like this mystified some readers 
and disquieted others, but it is not likely that many 
were stumbled by them. At all events, whatever 
incidental harm might have been done by trifles of 
this sort was largely overbalanced by the great and 
positive good accomplished through the book. 



II. 

Miss Phelps deserved her suddenly gained fame, 
but if it had rested on no other basis than this one 
book it would have proved evanescent. " The Gates 
Ajar " is even now, one fears, mainly of historic inter- 
est. Though it still is a good selling book, it is not 
so completely in touch with the spiritual needs of the 
Not a sin le time as when it was first printed, and by 
success. |.j^g time a third generation of readers has 

come on the stage it promises to be outgrown. This 
is the fate of books that address themselves to reli- 
gious emotion and one phase of religious thought. 
It was an open question in her case whether she would 
be content with this fame, or would strive after higher 
things. A first great triumph like this may have 
either of two effects on the writer, especially on a 
young and impressionable writer : it may be a stimulus, 
or a paralysis. In far too many cases one great stroke 
of fortune either puffs a writer up with conceit or ter- 
rifies him by its very greatness, so that he is never fit 
for a higher flight. The writer who has in him the 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 193 

true stuff, while grateful for the praise and apprecia- 
tion that he has won, is spurred on to greater industry 
and more concentrated effort. It was so with Miss 
Phelps. She was neither spoiled nor frightened, but 
girded herself for other and better work. For fifteen 
years she abandoned the theme through which she 
first gained the ear of the public, and devoted herself 
to fiction, averaging a book a year during this time. 
The culmination of this series of books was " The 
Story of Avis," which, in the minds of most readers, 
will long continue to be the favorite, though one or 
two others may press it rather closely. 

Miss Phelps is equally successful as a writer of 
short stories and in longer tales. She has become a 
thorough literary workman, and she never slights her 
work. Her plots are fairly good, though never com- 
plicated, and she peoples her books with persons 
whom it is good to know. Her knowledge of human 
nature is respectably wide and deep ; and though it 
does not impress one as exhaustive, it is satisfactory 
as far as it goes. From her books one gets 

. . , 111.1 ^^'' short tales. 

the impression that she has lived a rather 
shut-in life, circumscribed by conditions of health and 
of family duty that have made it difficult to see more 
than a small part of the world. But Miss Phelps cer- 
tainly knows her New England well ; she knows the 
dialect, the customs, the ways of thinking, the spiritual 
needs of the Yankee, especially the Yankee girl and 
woman, with a comprehensiveness and accuracy that 
none of our American writers surpasses. It is per- 

13 



194 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

haps in this spiritual knowledge that she excels, for 

she is — 

" One in whom persuasion and belief 
Had ripened into faith, and faith become 
A passionate intuition." 

All her stories are evidently from the same hand 
that produced " The Gates Ajar; " she could be con- 
victed of their authorship on internal evidence alone. 
The conscience of the woman descended from the 
Puritans, sensitive and introspective to morbidness, is 
incarnate in her books. In them all one reads the 
conviction that she has a message to souls diseased or 
disquieted, a message of peace and comfort, and this 
message she has managed to convey through her fic- 
tions not less plainly and perhaps more effectively to 
many than in her avowedly didactic books. It is to 
her praise that she has done this without any sacrifice 
of artistic purpose and method. She has never 
stooped to the writing of those sermons sugar-coated 
with fiction, that have brought equal discredit on two 
arts, both worthy of high honor, each in its own 
sphere, — the arts, namely, of story-telling and of 
preaching. 

III. 

It would be remarkable, indeed, if such a writer 
had had nothing to say on other than religious 
questions. In a biographical dictionary of some pre- 
tensions it is said of Miss Phelps : " Most of her life 
has been devoted to benevolent work in her native 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 1 95 

town, to the advancement of women, and to temper- 
ance and kindred topics." The statement may not be 
precisely accurate, yet it indicates sufficiently both the 
breadth of her sympathies and the practical form in 
which they have been manifested. She has written 
no great bulk of matter on temperance, 
but a book of hers, " Jack the Fisherman " 
(1887), is one of the most impressive temperance 
sermons ever preached, — all the more effective be- 
cause there is no offensive attempt to point a moral. 
Without constituting herself a common literary scold, 
her pen has always been at the service of any good 
cause, and she has been prompt to defend the op- 
pressed and the friendless ; and if she does not actually 
enjoy taking the unpopular side, at least she never 
shrinks from it. 

Much of this sort of writing has been done for the 
newspapers. Miss Phelps has been almost as in- 
veterate a newspaper contributor as her father, and 
both have been nearly worthy of the appellation of 
journalists. In years past a number of " the Inde- 
pendent " that did not contain an article, a ^ gemie- 
story, or a poem from her pen was rather ^"'"^^ ^ ^^^ ^• 
anomalous. These articles were and are invariably 
timely and readable, whatever their other character- 
istics may be. Miss Phelps could not be her 
father's daughter and write bad English, but style 
is hardly a transmissible endowment, and hers is 
original. One can describe it no better than by 
saying that it is the proper style of a gentlewoman. 



196 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

refined, reflecting thought and study without pedan- 
try, occasionally sparkling with wit, oftener glowing 
with gentle humor, brilliant and vivacious at times, 
well-bred and urbane always. Mrs. Burnett's style 
one calls charming. Miss Phelps's might be described 
as interesting, — not thereby implying that the one 
lacks charm or the other interest, but in each case 
indicating the dominant quality. 

Miss Phelps could hardly have failed to write on 
the perennial " woman question," born as she was at 
a time and in a society in which the emancipation of 
woman was a burning question. It is noteworthy 
and refreshing to mark her way of treating it, in 
contrast with the method of another New England 
woman of letters, " Gail Hamilton." Miss Dodge is 
a writer who may be compendiously described as 
" spicy." She excels in vivacity and wit. In sar- 
casm and invective she has hardly a peer among 
American authors. She is incisive, even combative, 
by nature, and thoroughly enjoys a good hot old- 
fashioned controversy, and is seldom worsted in a 
The woman Verbal encountcr. Her championship of 
question. j^^j, ^^^ ^^^ j^^ cause has been aggres- 

sive, defiant, one might add blustering if she were 
a man. She has produced essays by the volume on 
this theme, all thoroughly enjoyable and perhaps 
none of them convincing. Miss Phelps is a far less 
pungent writer, — the difference is like the difference 
between allspice and cayenne pepper, — and she has 
made fewer formal preachments on the subject. Her 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 1 97 

most characteristic utterances she has chosen to put 
in the garb of fiction, and her say on the woman 
question may be found in " An Old Maid's Para- 
dise" (1879), and its sequel, "Burglars in Paradise" 
(1886), and "Dr. Zay" (1884). The latter story 
shows the more power. The author evidently holds 
fast by two fundamental principles. The first is that 
woman has the same right to the higher education 
and an independent career as man, provided she 
wishes it and evidences the capacity for it. The 
second is that for the majority of women love and 
marriage are predestined, and the struggle against 
this manifest destiny for a separate career usually 
ends in surrender. It is not indiscreet, one hopes, 
to add that the author showed her faith in this teach- 
ing by her works, when in 1889 she became the wife 
of Mr. Herbert D. Ward, son of the veteran editor of 
" The Independent." We are not informed whether 
Dr. Zay continued her practice after marriage, 
but Miss Phelps (as an author she will always be 
known by that name) has continued her work. 
There was a brief attempt at collaboration on the 
part of Mr. and Mrs. Ward, which produced " The 
Master of the Magicians" (1890), and "Come 
Forth" (1891). This experiment can hardly be 
called happy, and probably the authors themselves 
have so concluded, for their recent work has been 
done independently. A successful literary partner- 
ship is one of the rarest things in literature. 



198 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



IV. 

The industry of Miss Phelps — she is the author 
of more than thirty volumes, the first of which was 
published in 1864, which is an average of more than 
a volume a year — would be remarkable in any case, 
but is astonishing in the case of one who has had to 
contend with ill-health, irritable nerves, and insomnia. 
She has never made any plaint, never asked for pub- 
lic sympathy, or made a claim for kinder 

Industry. . 1,1 

judgment on this score, but has gone on 
quietly with her work. It is impossible not to ad- 
mire this self-respecting reticence, and the indomi- 
table will that has made so much of achievement 
possible. The fact would not have been referred 
to at all, in spite of its having become public prop- 
erty long ago, but that it affords a clue to the better 
understanding of her work. There is in her books 
not a trace of the morbidness that sometimes accom- 
panies a state of partial invalidism, but it is not fanci- 
ful to ascribe to that source a deep thoughtfulness, a 
spiritual fervor akin to mysticism, a rapt assurance of 
faith that only those know who have been made to 
pass through deep waters, and have lived much alone 
with themselves and God. 

If there is a touch of melancholy in any of Miss 
Phelps's writings it is in her verse. Two volumes 
have been issued: "Poetic Studies" (1875), and 
"Songs of the Silent World" (1884). It is, per- 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 1 99 

haps, not quite just to speak of any of these verses 
as melancholy; the themes are generally solemn, 
occasionally sombre, but the treatment of them is 
not gloomy. The verse is stately, sober, intense, 
but not frigid. There is a tone of religious fervor, 
of unswerving faith and hope, that redeems all her 
poems from dismalness. Those who glance through 
these volumes for the first time will per- 

Her verse. 

haps be surprised at finding so large a 
proportion of amatory verse. They might, indeed, 
be entitled " Poems of Passion " if that would not 
provoke comparison with another collection of verse 
bearing that title. The passion in these poems is of 
the genuine kind, strong, sincere, thrilling, not simu- 
lated and theatrical. It does not demand for its 
expression language that borders on indecency, but 
flows — 

" In numbers warmly pure and sweetly strong." 

The substance of her verse is so solid, her work- 
manship is so conscientious always and so exquisite 
frequently, that Miss Phelps should be better known 
as a poet. And yet, if intelligent readers were asked 
to make a Hst of living American poets probably few 
of the lists would contain the name of Miss Phelps. 
This is presumably due largely to the character of 
the subjects she has chosen to treat, to the prevail- 
ing religious tone of her verse, and to the almost 
total absence of playfulness, of wit and humor, and 
of that lilt that catches the popular ear and gains 



200 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

currency for work otherwise very indififerent. Her 
poems are of a kind that only the cultivated, the 
thoughtful, the Christian reader, can fully compre- 
hend, and this necessarily implies a limited audience. 

Of all our American women of letters Miss Phelps 
impresses one as the most intense, the most high- 
purposed, the most conscientious in her art. Litera- 
ture is with her something more dignified than a 
means of livelihood, or a path to fame ; it is the high 
calling of God to glorify him and to serve her fellow- 
man. She is entitled to the praise of having faith- 
fully tried to fulfil this noble ideal. The world is not 
worse, but better, for every line she has written. 



F 



XII. 

ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 

EW writers of stories have a larger circle of 
admirers than Mrs. Whitney, and though her 
books are chiefly about young people and for young 
people, she has found no lack of appreciative readers 
among adults. There is in her books, in truth, a 
knowledge of men and women, a philosophy of life, 
a humor, that cannot be fully appreciated by imma- 
ture minds, though they may feel the charm of these 
as well as be fascinated by other qualities that lie 
closer to the surface. Much - as she has written, 
there is very little to be found in the way of criti- 
cism of Mrs. Whitney's work, apart from Her"com- 
ephemeral and usually rather perfunctory pi^te" works. 
notices in newspapers and periodicals of her books 
as they have appeared. The appearance of a new 
uniform edition of her writings, in the tasteful style 
for which the Riverside Press is justly famous, of- 
fered a favorable opportunity for a critical study of 
their contents. A somewhat formidable row they 
make, these seventeen volumes gowned in green, 
witnessing to the writer's diligence and putting that 
of the critic to a considerable test, unless he happen 
to have read most of them before. 



202 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



I. 

Adeline Button Train is a native of Boston, 
and spent her early life in that city. Her father, 
Enoch Train, was a successful man of business, the 
founder of a line of packet-ships between Boston and 
Liverpool, in the palmy days when the American 
A brief bio- Clipper was the queen of the seas. The 
raphy. brilliant, eccentric, erratic George Francis 

Train is her brother. The vein of mysticism in the 
writings of the sister has cropped out into something 
very like insanity in the brother, but the native men- 
tal gifts of both were far above the common and also 
out of the common. 

No doubt some of Mrs. Whitney's stories contain 
a large element of autobiography, but only she and 
her nearest friends could tell where history ends and 
fiction begins in her Faith Gartneys and Leslie Gold- 
thwaites. It would be perilous to attempt disentan- 
gling the two during her lifetime ; but in after years 
the " higher critic " may disport himself in recon- 
structing the story of her girlhood from the internal 
evidence afforded by her writings. What we now 
know certainly is, that before her girlhood was well 
passed, at the age of nineteen in fact. Miss Train 
became the wife of Seth D. Whitney, of Milton, 
Mass., and has lived a quiet home life in that town 
ever since. Mrs. Whitney has, it would appear, stu- 
diously avoided putting her personality in evidence 



ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 203 

before the public. She has virtually said, " My 
books belong to the world, my life belongs to my- 
self, my family, my friends." It is the duty of the 
critic to respect this reticence, and to inquire no fur- 
ther into the personality of the writer than the writ- 
ings themselves fairly warrant one in going. What 
of herself she has put into print is ours to know and 
to discuss. The rest belongs to the privacy of a 
gentlewoman, that nobody has a right to invade. 

II. 

At the very outset one is tempted to break one's 
good resolution not to go behind the facts of record, 
because the first fact arouses a curiosity that is not 
altogether impertinent. Mrs. Whitney's first recorded 
publication is a poem, "Footsteps on the Began as a 
Seas" (Boston, 1857). As she has per- p°^'- 
mitted the date of her birth to become part of her 
public record, it cannot be indiscreet to remark that 
the writer of this poem was already in her thirties, 
and to add that most of our American men and 
women of letters have shown the symptoms of the 
pen-and-ink disease at a much earlier period. Hence 
one's curiosity : did Mrs. Whitney have literary am- 
bitions, and do the usual preparatory scribbling in 
her early years; or did she (as we know was the case 
with " H. H.") make her first real essays in literature 
after she had reached middle life? This first publi- 
cation of Mrs. Whitney's, few of her admirers have 



204 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

ever seen, and it is not included in this last edition 
of her works, from which one might be justified in 
inferring a fixed intention to disown this bantling, 
were not four other volumes of her verses also 
omitted. 

The second book published by her still holds the 
field, "Mother Goose for Grown Folks" (New York, 
i860), and is deservedly a favorite with all her 
readers. In a revised, enlarged, and glorified form 
— illustrated, that is to say, by Augustus Hoppin — 
it has a place in the latest edition of her 

. Mother Goose. 

writmgs. It IS really a very clever book. 
In the main aspiring to be nothing more than dijeit 
d' esprit, not professing to possess high poetic merit, 
and somewhat careless as to workmanship, its play- 
fulness and wit mask a good deal of serious purpose. 
For example, these stanzas suggested by the familiar 
" Rockaby baby " : — 

" O golden gift of childhood ! 

That, with its kingly touch, 
Transforms to more than royalty 

The thing it loveth much ! 
O second sight, bestowed alone 

Upon the baby seer, 
That the glory held in Heaven's reserve 

Discerneth even here ! 

" O golden gift of childhood ! 
If the talisman might last, 
How dull the Present still should gleam 
With the glory of the Past. 



ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 20$ 

But the things of earth about us 

Fade and dwindle as we go, 
And the long perspective of our life 

Is truth, and not a show ! " 

Very amusing is " Brahmic," her parody on Emer- 
son's celebrated " Brahma," which she ingeniously 
turns into praise of Mother Goose : — 

" If a great poet think he sings. 
Or if the poem tliink it 's sung, 
They do but sport the scattered plumes 
That Mother Goose aside hath flung. 

" Far or forgot to me is near : 

Shakespeare and Punch are all the same ; 
The vanished thoughts do reappear, 
And shape themselves to fun or fame." 

In later years Mrs. Whitney has published four 
small collections of verse : " Pansies " (1872), " Holy- 
tides" (1886), and "Bird Talk" and "Daffodils" 
(1887). None of these is included in the present 
collection of her writings. Of her verse as a whole, 
it is not unjust to say that the public is right in not 
esteeming it as her chief title to fame. It shows 
talents that, devoted exclusively to this kind of com- 
position, might have given her high rank among the 
poets of America, since the conception of her poems 
is usually much above the formal embodiment of it. 
Most of her verse is contemplative, religious, with a 
tinge of mysticism. Her tendency is to see the 
hidden meaning, not in some things, but in every- 
thing — 



206 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

•■ As the Swedish seer contends, 
All things comprise an inner sense." 

This, which doubtless constitutes the charm of her 
verses to readers Hke-minded, is rather a bar to the 
appreciation of them by the many. 

III. 

It was not until the publication of " Boys at Che- 
quasset," in 1862, that Mrs. Whitney really found her 
vocation. She has done much better work since, but 
Finding her that story is still as fresh and pleasing as 
vocation. ^^^j^^^^ j^ ^^^^^ Written. Her portrait of 

" Johnnie," the careless, slovenly, hurry-scurry boy, 
is true to the life, and the process of his reformation 
is ingeniously worked out, without too great a draft 
on one's credulity or the making of him into a hate- 
ful prig. Five books then followed in quick succes- 
sion, of which to this day many of the author's readers 
do not know which is their favorite : " Faith Gart- 
ney's Girlhood" (1863); "The Gayworthys " (1865); 
"A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life" (1866); 
" Patience Strong's Outings " (1868) ; and " Hitherto " 
(1869). Mrs. Whitney may have done as good work 
since, — opinions might conceivably differ as to that, 
— but probably nobody will affirm that she has done 
better work than in these five stories. They mark 
the summit of her achievement in fiction, and by 
them the quality and value of that achievement may 
be fairly tested. 



ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 207 

The first and most vivid impression made by these 
books is that their author knows how to tell a story. 
This is not so common a faculty as might be sup- 
posed. Some of the greatest novelists have lacked it. 
Some have been destitute of it altogether, 
and are great nevertheless, but their ad- ^ ""^^'^ ^^' 
mirers are comparatively few. A writer with some- 
thing of Scott's gift of story-telling can win the hearts 
of his readers though he fail in pretty much every- 
thing else, while one who has this talent in small 
measure must have shining gifts indeed to compen- 
sate for its absence. Mrs. Whitney gets the reader's 
attention at the outset and holds it by the interest of 
her story. But this is by no means her only hold on 
the reader; she has the power of characterization, of 
making us believe in the solid reality of the person- 
ages with whom she peoples her books. Scott's 
books are fascinating for their stories, but could 
anything be more shadowy and unsubstantial than 
his Ivanhoes and Quentin Durwards, his Peverils 
and Guy Mannerings? Who ever thinks of them as 
he thinks of Falstafif and Hamlet, and in a less degree 
of Faith Gartney and Patience Strong? Mrs. Whit- 
ney's readers have been known to hold long discus- 
sions regarding the people of her stories, in which 
their actions and characters were canvassed and com- 
pared, and such discussions sometimes have waxed 
warm. People do not work themselves into a state 
of high moral indignation over personages of a novel, 
unless the author has a large measure of creative 



208 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

power, and so makes her pen-and-ink men and 
women as real as flesh and blood to her readers. 

The power of these books is largely due to their 
style. How Mrs. Whitney might write if she at- 
tempted something in prose outside of fiction, one can 
only guess. In that case her work might or might 
not deserve to be commended for its literary graces. 
The quality of her style that gives it savor and effec- 
„ , , tiveness in her stories is its homeliness. 

Her homely 

style. g]^g (jQgg j^q|- disdain the vocabulary of 

ordinary every-day life, the English that New England 
people use when they are not trying to be elegant 
and to " speak good grammar." She writes as 
simply, unaffectedly, and directly as people talk, 
and this naturalness goes a long way towards not 
merely explaining but justifying her popularity. 
Her young readers feel the value of this quality 
without being sufficiently analytic to tell what it is ; 
and her older readers, enjoying it more understand- 
ingly, know it to be a gift that only a few American 
writers possess. The bane of modern literature is 
self-consciousness and affectation; if Mrs. Whitney's 
unconsciousness of self is the result of study and 
labor, she has indeed mastered that last secret of 
art, apparent artlessness. 

Lively sallies of wit are not so common in these 

stories as that quiet, rather dry humor, born of native 

shrewdness and close observation, which 

Humor. 

distinguishes the Yankee. Emery Ann 
is nearly as keen as the more famous Mrs. Poyser, 



ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 2O9 

and a good deal more droll; and there are other 
characters nearly her equal. She lacks the poetic 
insight, the touch of genius, that Mr. Lowell has 
infused into Hosea Biglow, but in other traits she 
is his literary twin-sister. Genuine humor is a rare 
quality in women who write novels, and one ought 
to be proportionately grateful when he finds it so 
plentiful and of so high quality as in Mrs. Whitney's 
books. 

This leaves for mention at the very last, what many 
would put first of all, the religious tone of these and 
other stories by Mrs. Whitney. Some 

Religious tone. 

readers do not value this part of her 
work so highly, for several reasons. One is that 
the writer too often makes her books and even her 
characters " preachy." This is always bad art, but 
it is also bad from the moralist's point of view, be- 
cause it is comparatively ineffective. The only moral 
worth inculcating in a work of fiction is one that does 
not need to be inculcated, — the impression that the 
simple telling of the story, the mere working out of 
character, the unavoidable results of wrong-doing 
and the equally certain reward of goodness, make 
upon the reader without the author's comment. It 
is only the crude beginner in art who needs to put 
beneath his picture, " This is a horse," and there is 
something wrong about a story if its moral must be 
impressed on the reader by little preachments, whether 
the author's own or put into the mouths of her char- 
acters. Many sayings in Mrs. Whitney's books that 

14 



210 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY, 

would be admirable in a book of moral maxims, or in 
a collection of religious meditations, are better fitted 
to provoke the scofifer than to comfort and strengthen 
the saint, in their present location. 

Another fact that lessens the appreciation of some 
for the religious element of these stories has already- 
been mentioned in another connection, — their fre- 
Hermysti- qucnt, not to Say prevailing, tone of mys- 
^^'^^' ticism. The trail of Emanuel Swedenborg 

is over them all. Swedenborg is the one great re- 
ligious writer — one calls him great in deference to 
the opinions of others — from whom many would 
confess without shame that they have never been 
able to extract the least profit, and barely the sem- 
blance of an idea. It is difficult to have patience 
with anybody who pretends to understand him, or 
to extract profound truths from his chaos of words. 
His mysticism seems only one degree more intellec- 
tually respectable than theosophy. There are mul- 
titudes of readers of Mrs. Whitney in such case. It 
may argue a defect of mind or of soul in them that 
they are unable to see the thing that is not, — let 
us grant this to be the case; but because of this 
defect they cannot find in a considerable part of 
Mrs. Whitney's religious teachings the comfort 
and inspiration that some profess to derive from 
them. 

Mrs. Whitney's books for many years showed a 
growing artistic power. The "preachy" tone she 



ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 211 

outgrew in good part, and with experience in author- 
ship her touch became more sure, her mastery of her 
materials more complete. Her last books, . 

■T 'A growing 

if they have not greatly surpassed the p°"'^''- 
others, have at least shown no waning of her powers ; 
and in some of them she has shown her ability to 
write about and for others than young people. Pre- 
dictions regarding the future rank of the authors of 
our own day are about as valuable as the " oldest 
inhabitant's " confident remarks about to-morrow's 
weather, but there seems to be no good reason to 
question that Mrs. Whitney's books will continue to 
instruct and delight more than one generation of 
Americans after all her present readers are gathered 
to their fathers. 



XIII. 

BRET HARTE. 

NOTHING in the history of this Western world 
is more romantic than the story of California. 
Though it was early settled by Spaniards, it had 
little part in the life of this continent, until the 
revolutionary action of "The Pathfinder" secured 
its addition to the Union, Even then its develop- 
The Argonauts nient would havc bccu slow, in the 
°^'^^' natural course of events, but events did 

not take their natural course. The discovery of 
gold precipitated upon the Pacific coast a horde of 
adventurous spirits, and California advanced by 
great leaps towards civilization and Statehood. In 
a single generation the work of centuries was 
accomplished. Cities sprang up as if built by the 
slaves of Aladdin's lamp. Forests were hewn 
down, and what forests ! Vast engineering enter- 
prises were undertaken and accomplished ; railways 
were built, mountains were tunnelled, rivers were 
bridged, streams were turned from their beds to do 
the bidding of man. Those who made this new 
commonwealth out of a wilderness were no weak- 
lings. The difficulties of the overland trail and of 



BRET HARTE. 213 



the Cape Horn voyage produced a natural selection 
of the fittest. As their best historian tells us: 
"The faith, courage, vigor, youth, and capacity for 
adventure necessary to this emigration produced a 
body of men as strongly distinctive as the com- 
panions of Jason. Unlike most pioneers, the 
majority were men of profession and education; 
all were young, and all had staked their fortune in 
the enterprise. . . . Eastern magazines and current 
Eastern literature formed their literary recreation, 
and the sale of the better class of periodicals was 
singularly great. . . . The author records that he 
has experienced more difficulty in procuring a copy 
of 'Punch ' in an English provincial town than was 
his fortune at 'Red Dog ' or * One-Horse Gulch.' " 
Thrown upon their own resources altogether, 
separated by almost the breadth of a continent from 
civilization, these new-comers rapidly developed 
social and moral standards of their own, improvised 
laws for their government, and executed these laws 
with such celerity, impartiality, and substantial 
equity as civilized jurisprudence may envy but can 
hardly hope to surpass. Though the a picturesque 
majority of these Argonauts were men "^' 
of education and conscience, there was a strong 
sprinkling of the vicious, the degraded, the crimi- 
nal classes among them. Freed from artificial 
restraints, and from the softening influences of 
womankind, the natural man showed himself in 
this pioneer life, and made of it something wilder, 



214 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

more picturesque, more individual in flavor than 
has been known elsewhere on this continent, — the 
like of which has, indeed, seldom been seen any- 
where. It was altogether fitting that this pioneer 
life, with its vices and its virtues, should be em- 
balmed in literature; and the man for the times 
was found in a young printer of San Francisco. 

I. 

Francis Bret Harte — he has of late years 
dropped the first of these names, presumably given 
Birth and boy- ^^'^ by his sponsors in baptism — was 
^"""^ born in Albany, August 25, 1839. His 

father was a teacher in the Female Seminary of 
that city, which was then one of the noted schools 
of the State. He was a man of culture and taste, 
but died when his son was a mere lad, leaving his 
family unprovided for. Why his widow should 
have gone to California in 1854 is not recorded, 
and such a course on her part baffles conjecture; 
but go she did, and the youthful Bret went with 
her, to his own ultimate good fortune, and the 
greater fortune of American literature. The boy, 
under these circumstances, was unusually lucky 
to get even the common-school education that we 
are assured he received; and at no advanced age, 
we may be sure, he was compelled to look out for 
himself. His first experiment in this line is said 
to have been in his father's footsteps; he walked 



BRET HARTE. 215 



from San Francisco to Sonora and opened a school. 
This enterprise was unsuccessful, — not, we may 
be sure, owing to lack of push and zeal in the 
teacher, — and he next turned his attention to min- 
ing. Failing in this also, he thereupon obtained 
employment in a printing-office and became a 
compositor. 

From type-setting to literature is but a short 
step, and Bret Harte was not long in taking it. In 
a lately printed newspaper " interview " he has told 
us of a still earlier literary venture of his, — a 
poem called "Autumn Musings." He remarks that 
" it was written at the mature age of eleven. It 
was satirical in character, and cast upon the fading 
year the cynical light of my repressed dis- pj^^t attempt 
satisfaction with things in general. I ^'''"^'"s- 
addressed the envelope to the 'New York Sunday 
Atlas,' at that time a journal of some literary 
repute in New York, where I was then living. 

"I was not quite certain how the family would 
regard this venture on my part, and I posted the 
missive with the utmost secrecy. After that I 
waited for over a week in a state of suspense that 
entirely absorbed me. Sunday came, and with it 
the newspapers. These were displayed on a stand 
on the street near our house, and held in their 
places — I shall never forget them — with stones. 
With an unmoved face, but a beating heart, I 
scanned the topmost copy of the 'Atlas.' To my 
dying day I shall remember the thrill that came 



2l6 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

from seeing 'Autumn Musings,' a poem, on the 
first page. I don't know that the headline type 
was any larger than usual, but to me it was colossal. 
It had something of the tremendousness of a three- 
sheet poster. I bought the paper and took it home. 
I exhibited it to the family by slow and cautious 
stages. My hopes sank lower and lower. At last 
I realized the enormity of my offence. The lamen- 
tation was general. It was unanimously conceded 
that I was lost, and I fully believed it. My idea 
of a poet — it was the family's idea also — was the 
Hogarthian one, born of a book of Hogarth's draw- 
ings belonging to my father. In the lean and 
miserable and helpless guise of 'The Distressed 
Poet,' as therein pictured, I saw, aided by the 
family, my probable future. It was a terrible 
experience. I sometimes wonder that I ever wrote 
another line of verse. " 

Budding genius is not to be so lightly repressed, 
however, and Harte had not set type long before he 
had aspirations after the higher walks of journalism. 
His first articles were composed at the case, with- 
out the intervention of a manuscript, and these con- 
tributions apparently found favor with his superiors, 
for during the absence of the editor he was some- 
what rashly put in charge of the paper. The sub- 
scribers were largely miners, and some of the young 
editor's squibs so seriously offended them that 
there was a hasty return of the editor and an abrupt 
termination of the young man's editorial experi- 



BRET HARTE. 21/ 



ence. He had however, found his vocation, though, 
for a time, he was himself but half-conscious of the 
fact, 

II. 

Drifting back to San Francisco, Mr. Harte found 
employment as a compositor on the "Golden Era." 
A young author who has once seen himself in print, 
is no more to be restrained from gratify- From "case" 
ing his passion than a young tiger who *°^^^''- 
has for the first time tasted blood. There began to 
appear in the "Golden Era" anonymous sketches 
of frontier and mining life, and the conductors of 
the paper were not long in making inquiries about 
their authorship. When the young type-setter was 
discovered to be the guilty man, he was invited to 
lay down his "stick" and take up the pen. His 
editorial experience here was not long, however, 
for we find him soon after in charge of a literary 
weekly, called the "San Francisco Californian. " 
It was in this paper that his clever " Condensed 
Novels " first made their appearance. 

However cultivated Californians may have been 
in the sixties, and however well they may have 
patronized the literary periodicals of the East, and 
even of Europe, they do not appear to have appre- 
ciated their home product. " The Californian " 
lived for a time at a poor dying rate, and at length 
ceased to live at all. Mr. Harte then secured, in 
1864, an appointment as secretary of the United 



2lS AMERICAX WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

States Mint in San Francisco, a post that he con- 
tinued to hold for six years, with satisfaction to 
himself and his superior officers. His duties were 
not so onerous that he was unable to continue his 
literary labors; on the contrary, he wrote steadily, 
if not profusely, and laid the foundations 

Writes poems. 

of his reputation as a poet. "John Burns 
of Gettysburg,'' justly esteemed one of his best 
poems, belongs to this period ; so does " The Society 
upon the Stanislaus," one of the best known and 
most frequently quoted of his humorous poems. 
There are few, even of those inveterate newspaper 
readers that seldom look into a book, who have not 
heard of the animated debate provoked in that grave 
society by Mr. Brown's discovery of some fossil 
bones, or the sad fate of one man, when — 

" A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen, 
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the 

floor, 
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more." 

These poems were first published in the San Fran- 
cisco newspapers, but they caught the public fancy 
and were widely copied, giving the author his first 
taste of a continental fame. 

It is a curious fact, and one on which Mr. Harte 
himself dwells with bitter philosophy, that his 
Without honor cfforts to portray the pioneer life that he 

in his own 

country. kncw SO Well, whether m prose or verse, 

met with little local reward. Of reward in the 
shape of hard cash, we are justified in believing 



BRET HARTE. 219 



that they received nothing at all. Of praise they 
received only just enough to keep the author from 
throwing down his pen in despair. The educated 
men of California had been trained in a different 
school of literature; their taste had been formed on 
the English and American classics. Shakespeare 
they knew, and Wordsworth, and Bryant, and Poe, 
but who was this upstart, with his mixture of local 
slang and queer morals, to deserve their admiration.-* 
Once more a prophet had appeared to make good 
the ancient saying; and it was not until the plaudits 
of the cultured East greeted Bret Harte as the 
rising star of a new literature that he found honor 
in his own country. By that time he had shaken 
the dust of California from his feet forever. 

This is, however, to anticipate our story some- 
what. In July, 1868, was begun the publication of 
"The Overland Monthly," a somewhat 

An editor. 

ambitious periodical that aspired to be 
for the Pacific coast what "The Atlantic Monthly" 
had become for the East. Mr, Harte had so far 
established his reputation that he was indicated to 
the publisher as the best man to conduct the edi- 
torial part of the new enterprise. It seemed to the 
editor to be a defect in the first number published 
that it contained no romance distinctively Cali- 
fornian; and accordingly he set himself to work to 
remedy the defect. " The Luck of Roaring Camp " 
was the result of his labors. Having sent the 
manuscript to the printer, the editor-author was 



220 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



fairly entitled to consider his work ended, but it 
turned out to be just begun. One who reads the 
story now can hardly credit the account of the row 
that was raised over its publication. The trouble 
was begun by the proof-reader, and the printer took 
the extraordinary course of returning the proofs, 
not to the editor, but to the publisher, with the 
emphatic declaration that the matter was "so in- 
decent, irreligious, and improper," that his reader 
(a young woman) had with difficulty been induced 
to continue its perusal. One can hardly credit, 
also, that such a characterization of the story 
received the least attention from the publisher, 
still less that it produced an acute editorial crisis. 
Such, however, we are assured by Mr. Harte, was 
the fact. Ultimately the publisher decided to stand 
by the literary judgment of his editor, and not to 
have his magazine edited by the printer and proof- 
reader, but it was with fear and trembling that he 
saw the number go out. Its reception in California 
must have confirmed his worst misgivings, but the 
An immediate vcrdict of the East was different. The 
success. return mail brought a letter to the author 

from the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly," 
requesting, on the most flattering terms, a story for 
that magazine similar to "The Luck of Roaring 
Camp." Mr. Harte tells us that when he placed 
this letter in the hands of his publisher, he felt his 
compensation to be complete. He had caught the 
ear of the public at last. He had discovered the 



BRET HARTE. 221 



vein that he could profitably spend the rest of his 
life in working. 

From this time, during the brief continuance of 
his California life, stories and poems flowed rapidly 
from Bret Harte's pen. "The Outcasts of Poker 
Flat " deepened the impression made by his first 
tale, and is considered by many to be his finest 
story. "Higgles," "Tennessee's Partner," and 
other stories came in quick succession, and the 
crowning touch was given to his popularity by 
the appearance in the number of the " Overland 
Monthly" for September, 1870, of "Plain Language 
from Truthful James," the well-known The "Heathen 
verses about Ah Sin, the Heathen Chinee. ^'^""'^■" 
This poem is of slight literary value, compared 
with some of Mr. Harte's other work in verse, but 
it is a clever skit enough, and it happened to appear 
just at the time to meet with the heartiest welcome. 
Lines and phrases of it became household words all 
over the United States, and in spite of being now 
familiar even to triteness, they are still quoted by 
newspapers and public speakers as the word most 
pat to the occasion when John Chinaman is dis- 
cussed. The satire of the poem exposed better, 
perhaps, than sober argument could, the shallow- 
ness of the grounds on which the cry, "The Chinese 
must go," was raised. One questions whether some 
of the author's unpopularity in California may not 
be due to this championship of oppressed and mal- 
treated John. 



222 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



III. 

In the year following the publication of this 
poem Bret Harte left California, and has never 
Leaves Call- returned. He had won a public for him- 
forma. s^qM, but not on the Pacific Coast; there 

his recognition was slight from the first, and is still 
anything but general or fervid. Even now there 
are Californians who assert very positively that 
Bret Harte is not a representative Californian 
writer; that he has resided so long abroad as to 
lose his connection with the State, and that his 
books portray a condition of society that has long 
ceased to exist. Something very like antipathy is 
felt towards him now on the Pacific coast, instead 
of the cold indifference with which his first work 
was received there. Before he left, however, he 
had won recognition of a certain sort from those 
who were qualified to appreciate good work, as is 
shown by the fact that in 1870 he was appointed 
Professor of Recent Literature in the University 
of California. It does not appear that he ever did 
any work in connection with this chair, and he 
could not have held it more than a single year, for 
in 1 87 1 he came to New York. 

It was a somewhat Bohemian existence that he 
led in the metropolis, with no certain source of 
income and no regular occupation. There was at 
one time some talk of founding a literary periodi- 



BRET HARTE. 



223 



cal in Chicago to be conducted by him, but the 
capital apparently was not forthcoming; at any 
rate, nothing came of it. He continued 

Bohemianism. 

to contribute stories to the "Atlantic 
Monthly," and, we believe, made pot-boilers for 
New York journals; but perhaps his best known 
work of this period was his lecture on "The Argo- 
nauts of '49." This lecture was delivered in many 
places, and must have been a considerable pecuniary 
success; but Mr. Harte failed to make a deep im- 
pression on the lecture-hearing public and gained 
no permanent place in the lyceum field. This was 
perhaps as well for him. Had he been gifted with 
elocutionary graces that win the favor of ordinary 
audiences he might have been tempted from his 
legitimate work. 

It was in 1878 that he left his native country, 
practically for good, for though he may have made 
a brief visit or two since then, he has 

Goes abroad- 
resided most of the time abroad. He 

was first appointed consul to Crefeld, Germany, 
by President Hayes, and in 1880 was transferred 
to Glasgow. In this latter place he remained until 
a change of administration in 1885 and the exigen- 
cies of politics compelled his retirement. Since 
that time he has lived for the most part in London. 
He is a favorite in English society, and appears 
definitely to have joined that small but select body 
of Americans who for one reason or another have 
voluntarily expatriated themselves. From the time 



224 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

of his going abroad to the present moment there is 
little to tell about him, except the titles of the 
books he has published. These have been quite 
numerous, and all in the same vein with his " Luck 
of Roaring Camp " and other early tales. They 
merely repeat and amplify the picture of life and 
manners that he drew for us in that first volume. 
The most indulgent critic can say no more of these 
later volumes than that they are not unworthy of 
what he published before 1870. 



IV. 

Bret Harte is a singular example of the force 

that lies in narrowness. Speaking broadly, he is 

able to do just one thing well, and that 

Narrowness. , ii- i ■,• r -i i-ii 

is to delineate the life with which he 
became familiar in his early days. He can do that 
only in one way, through the medium of the short 
story. No, that is not just; he can also do it 
through the dialect ballad. There is no better 
work of the kind than " Dow's Flat " and other 
poems of a similar tone that he wrote late in the 
sixties. But in recent years he seems to have 
abandoned verse as medium of expression, and con- 
fined himself to prose. He has also, with a single 
exception, confined himself to the short story in 
his fictions. His "Gabriel Conroy " (Hartford, 
1876), the one case in which he attempted a full- 
grown novel, was something very like a failure, — " 



BRET HARTE. 225 



as near as a man of genius can come to failure 
when he attempts something beyond his powers. 
He was convinced by that experiment that his forte 
was in another direction, and has had the practical 
good sense to heed the lesson. This is not a 
common thing among authors, who seem to have 
the same kind of fondness for the works condemned 
by the world that a mother has for a deformed or 
feeble-minded child, Milton thought his " Para- 
dise Regained" superior to his "Paradise Lost;" 
Bunyan could never see that the second Perversity 
part of "The Pilgrim's Progress" was "f^^'^"--^- 
unequal to the first; and of all his poems Tennyson 
considered " Maud " the best. Tennyson affords an 
even more melancholy instance of wilfulness in his 
persistent writing of dramatic works, the best of 
which is not above second or third class, Mr, 
Harte is therefore to be credited with unusual 
intelligence in the perception of what he could do 
best, and uncommon self-control in restricting him- 
self to that kind of work. There is an advantage 
not to be lightly esteemed in thus restricting one's 
sphere. Breadth is very well when it does not 
mean shallowness, but with narrowness commonly 
goes a certain depth and force. None of our 
American writers has been narrower in range 
than Hawthorne and Poe, and of all our writers 
they are the most intense. 

Much objection has been raised to some of Bret 
Harte' s stories on the ground of their supposed 

IS 



226 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

immoral tendency. It must be admitted by his 
most ardent admirers that he decidedly prefers as 
Alleged immo- hcroes and heroines of his tales people 
''^^"^' of shady antecedents, — social outcasts 

preferred, but anybody who is in the habit of daily 
shattering a few of the commandments will answer 
his purpose. It is a remarkable fact, however, that 
the depravity of his characters is little more than 
skin deep; the worst of them are capable on occa- 
sion of transcendent deeds of heroism and self- 
sacrifice. His villains are, in truth, not very 
villanous, for their failings have a strong leaning 
to virtue's side. One suspects that their wicked- 
ness is only a quality imputed to them by the 
author to make them more interesting. It must 
be confessed that he has some justification for this 
course. Simple goodness, as material for fiction, 
is not very available; it is so often simple dulness. 
After all, from the strict moralist's point of view 
there can be no objection to the villain in fiction 
per se, else he must condemn "Paradise Lost" and 
" Othello " as immoral works. It is the moral 
lesson that the author teaches which justifies or 
condemns his choice of a villain as a hero. Bret 
Harte makes a spirited, and, one must think, a 
conclusive reply to the charge of immorality made 
against him on the ground that he has 

His reply. ° ° 

shown too much mercy to the wicked : 
"When it shall be proven to him that commu- 
nities are degraded and brought to guilt and crime. 



BRET HARTE. 



227 



suffering or destitution, from a predominance of this 
quality; when he shall see pardoned ticket-of-leave 
men elbowing men of austere lives out of situation 
and position, and the repentant Magdalen supplant- 
ing the blameless virgin in society, then he will 
lay aside his pen and extend his hand to the new 
Draconian discipline in fiction. But until then he 
will, without claiming to be a religious man or a 
moralist, but simply as an artist, reverently and 
humbly conform to the rules laid down by a Great 
Poet, who created the parable of the 'Prodigal Son ' 
and the 'Good Samaritan,' whose works have lasted 
eighteen hundred years, and will remain when the 
present writer and his generation are forgotten." 

The real objection to Bret Harte's stories does 
not rest on moral, but on artistic grounds. The 
trouble with his villains is not that they The real objec- 
are too bad, but that they are not bad *'°"' 
enough, — that is to say, they are not real. Such 
villains never were on sea or land outside of his 
stories, unless we except the Bowery stage in the 
melodrama of "ye olden time." There is a glare 
of the footlights, an atmosphere of the theatre, 
about too many of these tales, — not the best of 
them, for the best work of Mr. Harte is free from 
this defect, and ranks among the choicest in recent 
American literature. Another artistic defect in 
these tales is that their sentiment does not ring 
true; it often flats into sentimentality. More than 
any of our other American writers of fiction, Mr, 



228 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Harte is a disciple of Dickens, and he unfortunately 
often falls into the mawkishness of his master. 
He does not attempt the tender-pathetic with any 
"Little Nells" and "Paul Dombeys," but he 
preaches to satiety the duty of charity to the pub- 
lican and the sinner. We tire of it, precisely as 
we tire of the sentimental gush of Dickens about 
Christmas, and for the same reason, — not merely 
that there is too much of it, but that it does not 
seem to be quite the genuine thing. 

In his verse Bret Harte has shown a somewhat 
wider range. He does to perfection the humorous 
dialect rhymes in which his favorite Californians 
figure, but he strikes other and higher keys. Of 
these his "John Burns," as already noted, is one 
fine example, and others are "Dickens in Camp," 
"Twenty Years," "Telemachus and his Mentor," 
"Half an Hour before Supper," "To- the Pliocene 
Skull," and "Mrs. Judge Jenkins." Each of these 
represents a different manner, and each is of high 
excellence in its way. Had Mr. Harte been able to 
devote himself more exclusively to verse, one is 
warranted in believing that his name would have 
ranked high among American poets. 

It is a fact not to be passed by, that Bret Harte 
is one of the few American authors whose popu- 
Popuiarity larity is even greater abroad than at 
abroad. homc. Our English kin have a standard 

of literary excellence much like our own, but they 
have also an ideal peculiar to themselves of what is 



BRET HARTE. 229 



or should be American, and they are very exacting 
critics in this regard. They will not admit any- 
thing to be distinctively American unless it has 
some flavor of wildness, some garb of uncouthness. 
It is the same tendency of mind that makes the 
cockney tourist look about the streets of New York 
for the aborigines in paint and feathers that he has 
taught himself to expect, and to be vastly surprised 
at being told that he cannot hunt buffaloes and 
other big game in the immediate vicinity of our 
great cities. It is the good fortune of Bret Harte 
and one or two other American writers to have 
profited by this peculiarity of the reading Briton. 
Nobody will envy him his good fortune. One 
could wish, however, that the Briton might learn 
to admire, not with less of heartiness, but with 
more of intelligent discrimination, the literary work 
of the American Cousin. 



XIV. 
EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

VERSATILITY is too common a trait in 
Americans to be regarded as characteristic 
of any individual, and American men of letters 
are by no means lacking in this national idiosyn- 
crasy. There is here and there one among the 
knights of the quill, nevertheless, who realizes so 
fully the traditional accomplishments of the admir- 
able Crichton as to become a constant wonder to 
his brother workers and a positive marvel to the 
general. Reaching supreme excellence 

Versatility. 

m no one thing, perhaps, but only just 
missing it in several things, and doing half a score 
as only the picked men of his generation can do 
them, — if there were an " all around " champion- 
ship in literature as there is in athletics it would 
surely fall to a man of this type. Such a man was 
Lowell; such a man is Oliver Wendell Holmes; 
but perhaps of all the American writers of our day 
the one who excels in this "all around" work is 
Edward Everett Hale. He has raised versatility 
to the nth power, and covered with ignominy the 
hoary old proverb, for while he might be called a 
Jack at all trades, he is master of all. Ni/iz/ tetigit 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 23 1 

— the saying is something musty, but as applied to 
him its truth redeems it from triteness and gives 
it fresh currency. He has done much to give the 
world innocent amusement; he has done even more 
to make the world better. 



I. 

Some witty but not very reverent American has 
remarked that a man who is fortunate enough to be 
born in Boston does not need to be born 

Ancestry. 

again. This felicity was Mr. Hale's in 
1822. His ancestry was no less fortunate than his 
birthplace. The founder of the family was the 
Rev. John Hale, a divine of some repute in the 
Salem witchcraft days. The reverend John was a 
believer in witchcraft at the first, as we learn from 
his treatise, "A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of 
Witchcraft," published in 1697, but he afterwards 
came to a more rational view of the matter. Curi- 
ously enough, he was the only minister in the 
family for several generations, — ^all his descendants 
becoming either physicians or journalists. The 
literary bent in the family has always been strong, 
especially so in the immediate family of Dr. Hale. 
The father was a journalist; an elder brother, 
Nathan, followed in his footsteps; and a sister, 
Lucretia P., is a well-known writer for the maga- 
zines and author of books. They all took to liter- 
ature as naturally as if ink and not blood was the 



232 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

circulating fluid in their veins. Of his early Boston 
days Dr. Hale has lately given us a series of very 
interesting reminiscences, called " Recollections of 
a New England Boyhood." The book lacks the hu- 
mor of Warner and Aldrich, and the keen observa- 
tion of Howells, but it supplements their boyhood 
autobiographies very pleasantly. 

Dr. Hale's education was gained in the Boston 

Latin School and at Harvard College, where he 

was graduated in 1839. The next two 

Education. . 

years were spent in teaching and the 
study of theology, and in 1842 he was licensed. 
For several years he did not have a settled charge, 
but preached in various Unitarian churches. In 
1846 he was pastor at Worcester, but the settlement 
was a brief one, for the following year he received 
a call from the South Congregational church, of 
Boston. This church, one notes by the way, has 
never abandoned its orthodox name, though it gave 
up its orthodox faith early in the great Unitarian 
defection. Here for nearly half a century he has 
been the conscientious and hard-working pastor of 
a great city parish, and his pulpit has been a 
recognized force in the religious life of Boston 
during all those years. 

Dr. Hale is so much better known to the general 
public as a man of letters than as a Christian min- 
ister, one may be pardoned for dwelling 

Preacher. _^ 

a little on this feature of his work. He 
is not a theologian. By that one does not mean 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 233 

that he may not be learned in the history of dogma, 
and well versed in current theological speculation, 
or even an original thinker on the great problems 
of religion, but merely that he has not chosen to 
give the results of his study and thought to the 
world in formal theological treatises. He is not a 
great pulpit orator. There was a time when no 
visitor to the metropolis was thought to have seen 
the great show properly until he "went to hear 
Beecher. " Dr. Hale has never been a part of 
Boston's show in that way. There have been sensa- 
tionalists like the late "Adirondack" Murray, and 
genuine Christian preachers like Phillips Brooks, 
who have been more prominent in the public prints 
and have caught the popular ear more successfully, 
but this sort of popularity is no real measure of a 
preacher's influence. Dr. Hale, without being a 
great orator, is a preacher of originality, freshness, 
pungency, practicality. Moreover, he does not 
preach negations, he does not engage in dialectic 
duels with orthodoxy or agnosticism, but faithfully 
preaches the positive truth as he understands it. 
He does not preach morals, he preaches religion. 
And therefore, while there have been other men, 
now this one and now that, who have temporarily 
seemed to have more vogue with the people of 
Boston than he, there has been no more powerful 
and constant religious force in that city during 
the past half century than the pulpit of the South 
Church. 



234 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Nor has he been a preacher and writer so exclu- 
sively as to seclude himself from his people and 
hold himself exempt from the duties of a 

Pastor. ^ 

pastor. He has faithfully shepherded 
the flock. There has been a well-trodden path 
between his study door and the homes of his people, 
and none have gone to him in vain for sympathy, 
for consolation, for help. He has not frittered away 
his time in making social, gossipy calls on his 
parishioners, which is the ideal of pastoral visita- 
tion that widely obtains among both ministers and 
laymen, but he has not spared his time or strength 
wherever he could be of real service in ministering 
to the sick or the afflicted. In his case charity 
has begun at home, though it has not ended there. 



II. 

Dr. Hale first won public recognition as a man 
of letters through the "Atlantic Monthly." In 
one of the early numbers of that magazine his " My 
Double, and How he Undid me " almost immediately 
became widely known and highly appreciated. This 
success was repeated and intensified by other con- 
tributions to the same periodical, that placed him 
at once in the front rank of story-writers. The 
most famous of these stories, of course, is "The 
„, .,. _, Man Without a Country," and it strik- 

Philip Nolan. , _ -'^ ' 

ingly illustrates the author's chief char- 
acteristic as a story-writer. This is a power, such 



EDWARD EVERETT BALE. 235 

as perhaps no writer since Defoe has so fully 
possessed, of surrounding his tales with an atmos- 
phere of verisimilitude. In reading many authors' 
stories we say, "That might have happened," but 
after reading Hale's stories we say, "That did 
happen precisely as it is written." This story of 
Philip Nolan, though of imagination all compact, 
has been believed to be historical by thousands of 
readers, — "thousands" is no exaggeration in this 
case, but rather an understatement, — and people of 
vivid imagination and vague ideas of veracity have 
even been known to assert that they had seen 
Philip Nolan and knew him to be no myth. 
Greater tribute than this to a writer's power could 
not well be paid. 

"The Skeleton in the Closet," like "My Double," 
is an example of whimsical humor superadded to 
this gift of lifelike narration. There are charactens- 
some American humorists whose stories 
are very funny, but are so marked by exaggeration 
of traits that we feel at once, though we may not 
say, "Nobody could possibly be such a fool;" and 
there are other stories whose incidents are so 
absurd that they could never by any possibility 
have happened. But when Mr Hale tells us how 
a hoop-skirt destroyed the Southern Confederacy, 
while the fundamental idea is deliciously absurd, 
every link in the chain of fact he forges bears the 
weight of any test of credibility, — it all might have 
happened just so, and while we read we have no 



236 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

doubt that it did so happen, though, of course, we 
know it didn't. In this power to invent and tell a 
story bearing all the marks of history. Dr. Hale is 
without a peer among American writers. 

He is not so successful, however, in dealing with 
a theme that demands larger treatment. Few 
Novels less writcrs, indeed, are equally successful 
successful. .j^ dealing with the tale and the novel. 
The two species of composition demand gifts quite 
different and not often combined in one person. 
In a short story incident is everything; there can 
be no elaborate studies of character; everything 
must be sketched with a few bold strokes, and 
there must be no halting by the way. In the 
novel, on the contrary, the effect is produced by 
a multitude of details; digressions from the main 
purpose, if not too frequent or too long, are per- 
missible; and the study of character is far more 
important than incident. Books like " Ups and 
Downs " and " Gone to Texas " cannot be called 
much more than short stories spun out so as to fill 
a volume. This is merely to say, however, that 
even so versatile a man of letters as Dr. Hale, 
while he fails in nothing that he undertakes, does 
not reach an equal height of excellence in every- 
thing. If his short stories were not of a quality so 
superlative, his novels might, perhaps, have met 
with a higher appreciation. What would be bril- 
liant success in another, we count but moderate 
achievement in him. 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 237 



III. 

As a writer of fiction, Dr. Hale has been fairly 
prolific, but this is only one of the departments of 
literature cultivated by him. If all his 

Historian. 

fictions, short and long, were blotted out, 
he would still have a title to grateful remembrance 
as a writer of history. Besides being a valued con- 
tributor to many works that do not bear his name, 
— like Winsor's "History of Boston," — his name 
appears on the titlepage of some twelve historical 
writings. A number of these are "popular" books, 
the author merely taking his materials from stan- 
dard works and telling the facts in an effective 
way. "Stories of Discovery" is a good specimen 
of this kind of work. In other books Dr. Hale has 
made original and important contributions to his- 
toric knowledge. Witness his paper before the 
American Antiquarian Society, in which he re- 
counts his discovery of how the State of California 
received its name; also his volume of "Original 
Documents from the State Paper Office," in which 
the true history of Sir Walter Raleigh's first 
American colony and the colony at Jamestown was 
first accurately told. 

Had Dr. Hale chosen to devote his energies to 
the writing of history, he might, without doubt, 
have taken rank among the greatest historians. 
The same faculty of life-like narration, of making 



238 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

men and events seem intensely real to the reader, 
that is so great a power in his fictions, would 
The histories have been a wondrous gift in the writer of 
too "popular." ^^^^^ history. This faculty is manifest 

in the historical writing Dr. Hale has actually 
given us, but not to the degree one might wish. 
Indeed, though it seems ungracious to say it, these 
historical books are less satisfactory to one who 
studies them critically than the author's other writ- 
ings. They are unsatisfactory mainly because they 
manifestly fall so far short of what he was and is 
capable of accomplishing. They are superficial, in 
many cases, in their treatment of the material. A 
"popular" book need not be uncritical and un- 
scholarly; beneath the text should be solid attain- 
ment and careful study, though processes are kept 
out of sight and only results are given to the reader, 
— as the skeleton gives form and strength to the 
body, though invisible. Dr. Hale's "popular" 
books, moreover, are often as slipshod in style as 
they are superficial in scholarship. They betray 
marks of haste in composition. They are clever 
first drafts rather than carefully finished works. 
This is the penalty of the versatility so remarkable, 
and the industry not less remarkable, that mark the 
literary career of Dr. Hale. Nevertheless, when 
all possible deductions are made, there are but one 
or two living historians who might not have been 
proud to write these twelve volumes that bear his 
name. 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 239 



IV. 

The most distinguished member of a family of 
journalists, it was to be expected on general prin- 
ciples that Dr. Hale would, at some time 

Editor. 

of his life, become an editor. He has 
not merely realized this reasonable expectation, but 
has had a longer and a more diversified editorial 
experience than falls to the lot of most men who 
choose this as their sole calling. He began his 
apprenticeship to journalism as a mere boy, learn- 
ing to set type in his father's printing-office. It is 
said of him, and one can easily believe it to be 
true, that at one time or another he has served in 
every capacity on the Boston "Advertiser," from 
reporter up to editor-in-chief. The magazines and 
weekly newspapers that he has edited would make 
a respectable catalogue by themselves, and include 
the "Christian Examiner," "Old and New," "Lend 
a Hand," and "The New England Magazine." 
Several periodicals which he has been chiefly in- 
strumental in founding, and edited for a time, 
either maintain a prosperous existence still or 
have been absorbed into other ventures still more 
successful. 

Dr. Hale has always made an admirable editor. 
He is industrious, methodical, enterprising; he 
writes well himself, and he is a good judge of 
others' work; he knows what the people will read, 



240 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

and at the same time has a high ideal of what they 
ought to read ; and he has the faculty of gathering 
about him a corps of contributors, and inspiring 
them with his own enthusiastic purposes. Had he 
chosen to devote himself fully to daily journalism, 
what an editor he would have been! He would 
have preserved all the best traditions of the Greeley 
and Raymond school, adding to them a scholarship 
and a culture that the men of that school too often 
lacked, and bringing to his work a tone of high- 
mindedness and Christian principle, without the 
cant of religion, that daily journalism sorely 
needs. 

V. 

Many would regard Dr. Hale's work as a philan- 
thropist as the crown of a busy and diversified 
career, though it has been incidental. 

Philanthropist. 

almost accidental, in his work as a man 
of letters. It is not an uncommon thing for the 
publication of a book to become the occasion of a 
doctrinal propaganda. Rousseau's "Le Contrat 
Social " is a classic instance, and in our own day 
Mr. Henry George's "Progress and Poverty," and 
Mr. Edward Bellamy's " Looking Backward " have 
furnished other illustrations. It is not by any means 
so common for a book to give rise to a practical 
philanthropic movement based on the highest Chris- 
tian morality. Dr. Hale's "Ten Times One is 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 24 1 

Ten " (Boston, 1870), had this unusual good fortune, 
thus achieving a success that its author undoubtedly 
places far above any commercial success attained 
by his stories. The hero of this tale, Harry Wads- 
worth, had for his motto : " Look up and not down ; 
look forward and not back; look out and not in; 
and lend a hand," These clubs of ten, whose for- 
mation and method of work were suggested by this 
book, have very generally been called " Harry 
Wadsworth clubs," but, under whatever name, they 
have extended pretty much around the globe, hav- 
ing representatives not merely on this continent 
and in Europe, where we might reasonably expect 
them, but in Asia and Africa and the islands of the 
Pacific. This was the first successful attempt to 
enlist young people in Christian work, and was 
the parent idea to which may be traced the later 
success of other organizations, like the King's 
Daughters, and the Young People's Society of 
Christian Endeavor. The idea of the " Ten " as 
the unit of organization in the King's Daughters 
was borrowed directly from Dr. Hale; while its 
distinctive motto was probably suggested by the 
publication of another of his stories, "In His 
Name" (Boston, 1874), a tale of the Waldenses. 
There seems to be but one reason why these clubs 
did not have the same rapid growth in membership 
that the later organizations have had, namely, a 
prejudice against them in "orthodox" circles, owing 
to the fact that the clubs originated among Unita- 

16 



242 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

rians, — a very unworthy feeling, no doubt, but one 
quite inevitable in the present division of Pro- 
testant Christianity into a multitude of warring 
sects. Even with this drawback, in a little more 
than five years after the beginning of the movement 
these clubs counted a membership of fifty thousand. 

Dr. Hale was a pioneer also in another hopeful 
cause, the enlistment of young children in religious 
enterprises. The " Look-up Legion " that he was 
instrumental in organizing among the children of 
the Sunday-schools, has had its counterpart in 
"Band of Hope" temperance societies, in the 
"Junior Societies" of Christian Endeavor, and in 
the still more recent "Boys' Brigade." All of 
these organizations, though each proceeds on lines 
of its own, rest on the principle, to which Dr. 
Hale was among the first to give outward expres- 
sion, that formation is better than reformation, — 
that we may far easier mould character aright 
during its plastic stage than remake it when it has 
hardened into an immoral and un-Christian shape. 

One must not fail to record Dr. Hale's enthusi- 
astic and intelligent championship of popular edu- 
cation. He was one of the earliest and 

Chautauqua. 

has been one of the most constant friends 
of the Chautauquan idea. From his pen have come 
some of the most enticing text -books of the Chau- 
tauqua courses, — though one must, in good con- 
science, add that they have not always been equal, 
in accuracy of detail, to the spirit in which they 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 



243 



were conceived. He has been a favorite lecturer 
at the summer school that meets yearly in the 
Chautauqua assembly. Not only in connection 
with this movement, but throughout all his career, 
by voice and pen he has stood for the American 
idea of popular sovereignty, but the sovereignty 
of a people trained in the fear of God and in the 
knowledge of God's world. 

It is probable, nay, morally certain, that this 
account of Dr. Hale's protean activity fails to do 
him more than approximate justice. He has lived 
so full a life, that only an official biographer, with 
access to his papers and documents, can do more 
than vaguely outline the scope of his activities. 
The injunction of Scripture, " Whatsoever thy hand 
findeth to do, do it with thy might," he has fulfilled 
more completely than most men, and hrs hands 
have found so many things to do ! Such a life 
reminds one of the Indian proverb, quoted by Sir 
William Jones, " Words are the daughters of earth, 
and deeds are the sons of heaven." 



VI. 

It may seem to some readers somewhat incon- 
gruous to assign so much space, in an essay osten- 
sibly devoted to literary criticism, to the 

His power. 

non-literary undertakings of a man like 

Dr. Hale. Yet the procedure has its justification. 

To know any man's books it is a great help, if not 



244 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

an indispensable requisite, to know the man. It 
is also necessary, to judge the books properly, to 
know what has been accomplished through them. 
There are American authors who have written books 
more perfect in form than those of Dr. Hale; but 
his books, as the history of many of them has 
proved, have a power such as few American authors 
have shown. A marble statue may be more per- 
fect, in the artist's judgment, than a living man; 
but the living man, capable of conceiving and 
achieving great things, is worth more to the world 
than the lifeless marble with all its perfections. 
Dr. Hale's books may not live in the literature of 
the future, — that is, some of them may not, — but 
they will survive through all generations in the 
characters of men and women made nobler and 
stronger through their influence. 

A still further apology may be made for any 
shortcomings in this account of the purely literary 
work of Dr. Hale. It is so appallingly voluminous 
Voluminous- i^ extcnt He has written and published 
"^'^- fifty volumes; a complete bibliography 

would make the number rather over than under the 
half-hundred mark. It would be manifestly absurd, 
with such a row of books staring him in the face, 
for a critic to attempt anything like a detailed 
examination of them in less space than an entire 
volume. The most that can be done is to select 
representatives of each class, and thus give a fairly 
comprehensive account of the work as a whole, 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 245 

without attempting exhaustive completeness. This 
is what has been attempted in this paper, and 
only a few things remain to be said by way of 
summing up. 

Dr. Hale, in nearly all that he has written, has 
had a higher purpose than merely to amuse; in 
spirit and aim he has always been the Always the 
preacher, whatever he may have been p''^^'^^^'"' 
doing. To say this will be to pronounce his con- 
demnation, in the judgment of some narrow theo- 
rists, who prate of "art for art's sake," as if all 
truth had been finally committed to their hands for 
exposition and defence. But if Dr. Hale has always 
been preacher, as man of letters he has always been 
artist. His professional fondness for homiletics 
has never confused in his mind the distinction 
between sermon and story. Hence, while his fic- 
tion always preaches, it is never "preachy." He 
has learned the secret of teaching without didac- 
ticism. He never wrote a novel without purpose, 
and he never wrote a novel with a pur- ^^^04 
pose. This is paradox: it is also truth. "P'^^^^'iy-" 
He so tells a story that it makes its own impression, 
and a word of formal preaching would mar the effect. 
The fictitious history of "The Man Without a 
Country" is an excellent example of his achieve- 
ment in this line. It was published during the 
throes of our civil war, at a time when its author 
wished to make the strongest plea in his power for 
loyalty to our country and its flag. It made a 



246 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

profound impression, and it is hardly an exaggera- 
tion to say that the story of Philip Nolan was 
worth as much to the Union cause, in its effect on 
the morale of the people at a critical time, as a 
victory won by our armies. Only those who put 
bullet above brain, and mortars before morals, will 
belittle the effect of such a story. Great as it is, 
judged purely by literary standards as a piece of 
composition, it is greater as a sermon. 

One thing is remarkable in all of Dr. Hale's 
writing, and that is his cheerful optimism. One 
can recall nothing in his books at variance with 
this dominant "note." He does not, indeed, go to 
the extreme of maintaining that this is the best of 
all possible worlds, and that whatever is is right; 
but his heart ever sings with Pippa, — 

" God 's in his heaven — 
All 's right with the world ! " 

He believes, in every drop of his blood, in the 
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. It is 
a short creed, but there is none better; and on the 
practical side of it, we are assured on excellent 
authority, hang all the law and the prophets. 
Thus believing, Dr. Hale holds that the 

His optimism. . . . ^ 1 • 1 r 1 i 

amelioration of the race is hopeful, and 
the strength of this hope is in the possibility 
of leading men to recognize their divine sonship. 
It is a levelling up, therefore, not a levelling down, 
toward which he directs his energies and his hopes. 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 24/ 

"You are my brother," says Tolstoi, to the poor 
and degraded, "and therefore I will live with you 
and be dirty." "You are my brother," says Dr. 
Hale, "therefore live with me and be clean." This 
brief apologue illustrates two very different modes 
of approaching current problems relating to man- 
kind and its social advancement. Much — not all, 
but much — of that which passes under the name of 
socialism belongs to the first category. Who of us 
will hesitate to proclaim his belief that Dr. Hale 
has found the more excellent way.-* 

One takes leave of the Boston preacher, author, 
and philanthropist with regret. His is a nature 
cast in a large mould, a mind broad and hospitable 
to all truth, a soul instinct with faith, hope, and 
charity. Such a man, write he never so much, will 
necessarily be greater than any or all of his works. 
He cannot be measured by the standards of mathe- 
matics, for in him the whole is indefinitely greater 
than the sum of all its parts. 



XV. 

EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

AVERY interesting essay might be written on the 
advantages of ill-health to men of letters. 
Whether by accident or in obedience to some law of 
human nature, it has happened in the history of liter- 
ature that some of the greatest achievements have been 
due to men of infirm body. Ancient literature pro- 
duced no more industrious and eminent man of letters 
than Cicero, yet nearly all his life he struggled with 
The triumph ill-hcalth. Calvin wrote a whole library of 
° ""'^ ■ books, and he, too, lived in a chronic state 

of invalidism. Pascal, though the volume of his work 
is comparatively small, made some of the choicest 
contributions to French literature, and his life was one 
long disease. In American literature, we may cap 
these instances with the names of Francis Parkman 
and Edward Eggleston. What Mr. Parkman achieved, 
in spite of afflictions and discouragements that would 
have crippled a man of ordinary industry and firmness 
of will, is a tale that has been often told without losing 
any of its romance. The story of Dr. Eggleston's life 
is hardly less striking ; and though no single achieve- 
ment of his can be said to surpass, or perhaps to 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 249 

equal Mr. Parkman's work, in the sum it is proof of 
unsurpassed industry, dogged perseverance, and un- 
flagging purpose. 

I. 

Edward Eggleston was born at Vevay, Ind., 
December 10, 1837. His father was a lawyer by 
profession and a Virginian by birth. He died, how- 
ever, when his son was a lad of nine. From the day 
of his birth young Eggleston enjoyed poor health, as 
they say in New England. He was a delicate boy, 
whose very continuance in life seemed at 

1 , r 1 • ^'^ youth. 

times most uncertam ; and because of this 
delicacy he was not only unable to join in the hearty 
out-door sports of other boys, but was prohibited 
from pursuing any systematic course of education. 
He spent hardly more months in school than Abraham 
Lincoln, and, like the more famous Hoosier boy, was 
almost entirely self-educated. In 1856 his health was 
so delicate that his life was despaired of, and he spent 
four months in Minnesota in an attempt to restore it. 
Returning somewhat stronger, he became a Methodist 
circuit rider. 

The circuit rider of those days was an institution 
peculiar to the time and the country. There have 
been circuit riders elsewhere, but none of . . . .^ 

A circuit rider, 

the precise type that the far West pro- 
duced in its pioneer days. These men of faith, car- 
rying their library as well as their wardrobe in their 
saddle-bags, preached the gospel through the entire 



250 AMERICAX VVKITERS OF TO-DAY. 

frontier region of Anieriea. Their houses of worship 
were God's own temples, the woods. They lived in 
the plainest manner, sharing- all the hardships of the 
pioneer people, making hazardous journe\"s, in fre- 
quent danger from floods, from wild beasts, and from 
men even more savage. The circuit preacher had a 
parish that, as one of them said, " took in one half of 
creation, for it had no boundary on the West." In 
many cases he was hardl\- more literate than his hear- 
ers, and these were fortunate, indeed, if they could 
read their Bibles and write their names ; yet these 
uncouth preachers led multitudes of men to Christ, 
built churches, and laid denominational foundations 
deep and broad throughout all the great West. The 
present generation has entered into their labors with 
far too little comprehension of the tribulation and 
self-denials that those labors entailed. 

INIr. Eggleston was. undoubtedly, a better educated 
man than many of the circuit preachers, as well as a 
man of greater native force of mind. He would never 
have been an ordinary- or even an uncultivated man, 
His self- wherever his lot might have been cast. 

culture. With a hunger for knowledge, he was cer- 

tain to gratify this craving in some manner under any 
circumstances. Those who have read his writings 
know liow much of an education in human nature this 
experience was to him, and what a great part it had 
in making the broad-minded, tolerant man that he 
became. The severity of these labors, in spite of the 
healthfulness of the out-of-door life, compelled him 



EDWARD KGGLKSJ'ON. 25 I 



from time to time to desist and finally to abandon his 
calling altogether. 

Just when Mr. Eggleston began to have leanings 
toward literary work it is not possible, with the light 
we now have, to say. What is certain is, that the 
outward beginnings of his literary career , 

° ° ^ Journalist. 

may be found in his removal in 1866 to 
Evanston, 111., and his acceptance of a position on the 
editorial staff of the " Little Corporal," one of the first 
and most popular of American periodicals for the 
young. During his connection with it the quality of 
this paper was very much bettered, and up to the 
time of its sale to the newly established " St Nicholas " 
it was, on the whole, the best periodical of its class. 
This journalistic experience in the West was extended 
by several years' service on the staff of the " Sunday- 
school Teacher" in Chicago, during which time the 
circulation leaped from five thousand to thirty-five 
thousand copies, — an emphatic testimony to the 
faithfulness and ability of his work. 

In 1870 Dr. Eggleston came to New York. He 
was at first the literary editor of the " Independent," 
and for a time succeeded Theodore Tilton as editor of 
that newspaper. In 1871 he was editor of "Hearth 
and Home," and with his resignation of this comesto 
post two years later his editorial labors 
ceased. He showed in all the positions that he filled 
that he had the true journalistic gift, and, had his 
health permitted the severe and unintermitting appli- 
cation that the calling requires, he would, without 



252 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

question, have been one of the most brilHant of 
American journaHsts. 

From 1874 to 1879 Dr, Eggleston was pastor of 

the Church of Christian Endeavor, Brooklyn. This 

church was as independent in its ecclesiastical relations 

as Dr. Eggleston himself has always been 

Pastor. .... 

in his thinking and ways of work. Never, 
perhaps, a popular preacher in the accepted sense of 
that term, he was one to whom multitudes of men and 
women belonging to the unchurched classes naturally 
gravitated. He had a message for many uneasy and 
hungry souls that find it difficult to be satisfied "with 
the rigid creeds and the orthodox sermonizing of the 
ordinary evangelical churches. That this class is at 
present a large one in our great cities no one who is 
familiar with the facts will question, and Dr. Eggleston, 
during these five years, was received by many people 
of this type as a prophet of God. They were in- 
structed, and, best of all, they were stimulated to holy 
living and good works by his preaching. His church 
was known as eminently a working church, a practical 
church. Some of his methods for reaching and hold- 
ing young men scandalized the staid orthodox people 
of Brooklyn ; but if they did not accomplish all the 
good that he expected, it does not appear that they 
ever did any serious harm. 

Since his retirement from this pastorate, Dr. Eggles- 
ton has devoted himself entirely to literary work. 
His residence for half the year is still in Brooklyn, 
but during the other half-year he lives at Owls' Nest, 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 253 

a picturesque cottage, beautifully situated on the 
shore of Lake George. Here he keeps his library, — a 
collection of some four thousand volumes, the greater 
part relating to colonial history, — and here he does 
his writing. 

II. 

Dr. Eggleston'S first venture in pure literature, 
as distinguished from ephemeral journalistic writing, 
was " The Hoosier Schoolmaster." This story was 
published as a serial in " Hearth and Home " during 
the opening year of his editorship of that periodi- 
cal, and was written in the midst of ab- 

First story. 

sorbmg labors of all sorts, such as fall to 
the lot of every editor. The publication as a serial 
was begun before the story was more than well planned, 
and throughout its continuance the author was com- 
pelled to labor almost literally with the " devil " at his 
elbow. The novel made a sensation from the outset ; 
indeed, how could it be otherwise? Not only had it 
great merits as a story, but it was so evidently written 
out of the author's heart and experience that no reader 
could fail to be impressed by its truth to life. It was 
a tale of great freshness, too. The pioneer preacher 
had become a pioneer in fiction. At that time (1871) 
few American writers had begun to suspect what a 
wealth of material existed for the novelist in our own 
country, especially in the West and South. The sea- 
board States had been exploited to some extent, 



254 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

though the material was by no means exhausted, and 
the fame of Bret Harte was already abroad in the 
land ; but in dealing with pioneer life in the newer 
West Dr. Eggleston was breaking soil as virgin as 
that of its own prairies. 

There followed in due time several other books of 
the same general character, even better in literary 
finish and of similar flavor : " The Circuit Rider " 
.(1874), "Roxy" (1878), "The Hoosier Schoolboy" 
(1883), and "The Graysons " (1887). "Roxy" and 
" The Graysons " were first published as serials in 
Other books " ^^^ Ccntury," and made the author known 
to a wider circle of readers than he had 
before possessed, and also gave to his writings the 
stamp of critical approval so highly valued by some. 
Before this time certain critics and readers had affected 
to look on Eggleston as an undisciplined product of 
the Wild West, hardly to be ranked alongside of the 
more cultured writers of the East. When he was 
taken up by one of the foremost periodicals of the 
world, it was necessary to revise this provincial judg- 
ment and award him his due place among our chief 
writers of fiction. 

Of late years Dr. Eggleston has written less fiction, 

and in what he has written he has confined himself less 

closely to Hoosierdom. He has lived long enough 

now in the East to know it as well as he knows the 

West, better perhaps than he knows the 

Later writings. ^^. . . ,, iii-ii 

West of to-day, and he probably judged 
wisely in giving more of scope and variety to his work. 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 255 

"The Faith Doctor," with its study of Christian 
Science and faith cure, was remarkable not only for 
its up-to-date, y?« de siecle treatment of current specu- 
lation and social phenomena, but for its very accu- 
rate local color. It was quite distinctly the novel of 
the season when published. Rumor has it that Dr. 
Eggleston will write no more fiction, but will devote 
his remaining days to his labors as a historian. 

It would be easy to analyze Dr. Eggleston's fictions, 
and to show in detail their literary excellence, but the 
task is in his case as superfluous as it might be tedious, 
for his chief excellence is not literary. He The man 

^ greater than 

is, to be sure, a conscientious and artistic Aeamst. 
writer, and in the technicalities of his craft he has 
nothing to fear from a comparison with others. What 
is meant in saying that his chief excellence is not liter- 
ary is, that in him the artist is subordinate to the man. 
It does not require an intimate acquaintance with him 
to convince one that his is a personality that 

" Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity." 

His closest friends describe him as a born philanthro- 
pist, whose house, wherever he may dwell, is thronged 
with those who stand in need of material or spiritual 
comfort, and who never depart unclothed and unfed. 
These ministrations are never professional and per- 
functory, but are rendered in the spirit of Christian 
brotherhood. It is the throb of this warm and true 
heart, with its love for all humankind, its sympathy 
with human sorrows, its pity for human weakness, 



256 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

its tolerance of human, errors, that one. feels in Dr. 
Eggleston's books, and iA this his peculiar" charm and 
power must be sought. •■. "- . 



JIL 



Dr. Eggleston's determination to', give us no 
more novels, in spite of the high rank he has won 
as a writer of fiction, is -understood to be due to his. 
absorption in historical study. This is in no sense a 
sudden change of purpose, a transference of interest 
from one branch of the literary profession 

Historian. ^ 

to another, such as sometimes results from 
whim or ennui. One could comprehend how a popu- 
lar novelist might becoriie unspeakably weary of pro- 
ducing his novel a year,.and how in sheer desperation 
and poverty of soul he might turn to other work for 
relief. So far as appears, Dr. Eggleston does^ not 
cease to write fiction because he is tired osi it, -and 
certainly he does not cease because the public is 
tired of him. He has a conviction, however, that he 
can do work of higher quality, of more lasting value, 
as a writer of history. Probably this conviction is 
well founded, and at any rate he is quite right to 
refuse to do what his conscience tells him is not the best 
of which he is capable, whether for the present the 
world agrees with him or no. It is more than likely 
that the world will disagree with him, for it loves to 
be amused and hates to be instructed. 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 25; 

The study of history, and the writing of it too, is, 
as has been intimated, not a recent pursuit of Dr. 
Eggleston's. It has more or less employed him 
throughout his busy career, and in these latter years 
may fairly be called the passion of his life. Long 
years ago he began to collect books relating to the 
colonial period of American history. This labor of 
love he has continued until he is said to have a 
collection of volumes, old and new, of every con- 
ceivable date, style, and condition, such as it would 
be hard to duplicate outside of our great DOigencein 
public libraries, if it could be duplicated T^^^^'''^'^' 
even there. The libraries and book-stalls of Europe, 
as well as those of America, have been ransacked for 
the making of this collection. Besides, he has ac- 
cumulated a mass of old prints, casts, manuscripts, 
autographs, curios, and relics of all sorts, that are 
something more than mere rarities to be gazed at, 
and are invaluable for illustrating his text. This 
reproducing to the eye the features of colonial life 
is something that has never before been attempted 
in a serious and systematic way, and its value can- 
not be overestimated. No one who is familiar with 
Knight's "Pictorial History of England," or with the 
illustrated edition of Green, will be disposed to un- 
dervalue the worth of a like service performed by a 
competent scholar, with rare industry and accuracy, 
for our own history. 

Dr. Eggleston's first contributions to American 
history took the form of biographies of celebrated 

17 



258 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Indians. First came "Tecumseh" (1878), followed 
speedily by "Pocahontas and Powhattan " (1879), 
" Brant and Red Jacket " (same year), " Montezuma 
and the Conquest of Mexico" (1880). With the 
exception of the last-named book, these 

Biographies. ,. .,ii i r t i 

biographies still have the field pretty 
much to themselves, and are likely to hold it for 
some time to come. Though these worthies figure 
of necessity in every history of America, most his- 
torians content themselves with giving them a para- 
graph, or at most a page, each. Dr. Eggleston 
found abundant materials for full-length biographies ; 
and the freshness of the subjects and the complete- 
ness of the research on which the books were 
founded, recommended them to popular favor hardly 
less than the animated style in which they were 
written. 

In 1888 was published a "History of the United 
States," in two single-volume editions, one for school 
use, the other for general reading, and so appropri- 
ately called a " Household edition." It was by no 
means a waste of his time or talents for an author 
like Dr. Eggleston to undertake such a work, for to 
History of the pfoduce a really good popular history is 
United States. ^^ ^^^ worthy of any man's ambition. 
This history is ideally good, thanks to the writer's 
skill and the publishers' liberality. The house of 
Appletons is justly famous for its illustrated books ; 
but though it has issued volumes far more costly and 
of greater significance as works of art, its imprint has 



EDWARD EGGLESTON. 259 

never been placed on a book in which art has been 
more successfully made the handmaid of history. 
The illustrations were selected and have been exe- 
cuted with the purpose of combining artistic excel- 
lence with historic significance, and this mark has 
been hit with great accuracy. The text is almost 
as pictorial as the illustrations ; the author has caught 
the secret of presenting our country's history in a 
manner that may fairly be described as panoramic. 
Though intended for young readers especially, it 
has been quite as fully appreciated by their elders, 
who value it as the best brief history of their country 
that has yet been published. 

The chef d'cetivre of Dr. Eggleston, the culmina- 
tion of life-long study and many years' exclusive toil, 
is a history of the American people. The title has 
been announced in various forms, such as " History of 
Life in the United States," and " Life in the his^/^c/ 
Thirteen Colonies," — or, perhaps, the latter '^''^"^"'^• 
is only a sub-section of a larger work. Chapters of 
this work have already appeared in " The Century," 
and have aroused expectation to a very high pitch. 
Compared with the form in which it will ultimately 
appear, this serial publication may be regarded as, 
in a sense, only the first rough draft; and this being 
the case, we are warranted in expecting that the 
completed form will be one of the most important 
historic books of our century. 

That this is no exaggerated estimate will appear 
from a critical examination of what has already been 



260 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

printed. There are histories of the United States in 
great plenty, and many of them have extraordinary 
Life of the merit. There is no history, however, that 
people. adequately records the facts of, and traces 

the development in, the life of the people. It would 
be uncritical to depreciate the value of those histories 
that devote themselves chiefly to a record of events ; 
that follow the rise, growth, and decay of political 
parties, or thread the mazes of diplomacy; that de- 
scribe great campaigns and the single battles which 
have decided the destiny of the continent ; that trace 
the marvellous development of industry and com- 
merce. All of these things are important, instruc- 
tive, and interesting, but they are not the history of 
the people. We still wish to know what manner of 
men and women our forefathers were, how and what 
they ate and drank and wherewithal they were clothed, 
what houses they lived in, and what other creature 
comforts they enjoyed. We wish to understand their 
social customs, to penetrate the secret of their re- 
ligious life, even to hear their daily gossip. It is not 
beneath the dignity of history to concern itself about 
such things, and we cannot say that we have mastered 
any period until we have gained such knowledge of it. 
That Dr. Eggleston is capable of doing this sort of 
work incomparably well he has already given proof. 
He has now spent a decade, in almost entire exclu- 
sion of other labors, on this work; and when the 
stately volumes appear, they cannot fail fitly to crown 
a long, a varied, a useful, a highly honorable life. 



XVI. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 

ONE hesitates whether to call Mr. Cable a 
representative Southern writer, for such a 
characterization might give offence. And yet, con 
sidering the writings by which he is chiefly known 
and on which his fame must hereafter rest, one 
does not know what other description would suit 
the case. If a man born and bred in the South, of 
an old Southern family, whose fictions are saturated 
with the South and reflect its life with photographic 
accuracy, — if such a man may not be said to be a 
representative Southern writer, to whom how far a 

1 1 1 1 • n ^ T . Southern 

may that phrase be applied.-' It is true writer, 
that of late years Mr. Cable has become out of favor 
in the South, that his name is rarely spoken there 
without some adjective of condemnation or execra- 
tion, but this state of things has no connection with 
literature proper. It is not because of his novels, 
but because of certain political writings of his, that 
Mr. Cable has thus lost the favor of those among 
whom he was born and bred, for whom he shed his 
blood, and with whom he has spent the greater part 
of his life. The son and grandson of slaveholders. 



262 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

he has dared to plead the cause of the ex-slave, dared 
to oppose the dominant idea of his native State, 
dared to speak the truth as he sees it, though in a 
minority of one. This is his sin, and the South has 
pronounced it to be unpardonable. Leaving for the 
present this political question wholly to one side, 
let us consider the purely literary part of Mr. 
Cable's work. Most of this was produced before 
his political heresies were promulgated, and has 
been neither bettered nor spoiled by those heresies. 
It has, therefore, a double claim on our impartial 
consideration. Even those who condemn most 
strongly the treason of Benedict Arnold do not 
withhold their praise of his services at Quebec, 
Lake Champlain, and Saratoga. In like manner 
even they who regard Mr. Cable as a traitor to his 
race, his State, and his party, may without incon- 
sistency, and should in justice, consider his earlier 
writings apart from his later. 

I. 

Mr. Cable was born in New Orleans, October 
12, 1844. Through his father he is descended from 
a Virginia family of German origin. His mother 
was a New Englander, and from her the novelist 
derives that strain of Puritanism so evident in his 
character as in his work. 

It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his 
youth, to have his sinews toughened and his will 



GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 263 

braced by a struggle with poverty, provided he 
really is a man and not a weakling. The elder 
Cable was a prosperous man of business a toilsome 
until 1849, when he failed. After his ^°"'*'- 
death in 1859, at an age when most boys have noth- 
ing to think of but books and play, young Cable was 
compelled to share the support of the family. He 
never grumbled, though he was a studious lad who 
would have liked and profited by a liberal education. 
He had a liberal education indeed, — not in any col- 
lege, but in the school of adversity, — and it made of 
him a man thoroughly trained, completely equipped, 
able to hold his own with any. 

Hardly had young Cable begun a mercantile 
career as clerk in a New Orleans house when the 
Civil War broke out. He was too young confederate 
to serve in the army at first, though his ^°'^'^''' 
sympathies were naturally with his State and the 
South; but in 1863 he enlisted in the Fourth 
Mississippi Cavalry, and remained in the service 
till the close of the war. He was a good soldier, 
and bears some honorable scars to testify to his 
valor. After the war he had a somewhat checkered 
life, — now a clerk, afterwards a member of a sur- 
veying and exploring party; in which latter work 
he contracted a severe malarial fever, from which 
he was two years in recovering. This was by no 
means " lost time, however, for in these years he 
accumulated much of the material of which later he 
made so good use. 



264 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



11. 

Mr. Cable, like many other American writers, 

made his first literary venture in journalism. He 

began as an occasional contributor to the 

Journalism. 

" New Orleans Picayune, and as his com- 
munications found favor he increased their frequency 
until he came to be regarded as a member of the 
staff. The story has been told that his connection 
with the paper was abruptly severed by his refusal, 
on conscientious grounds, to write a theatrical criti- 
cism that had been assigned him, but his own 
version is much more prosaic: "The true cause of 
my dismissal was simply that as a reporter I was a 
failure." After this he sought and obtained em- 
ployment as clerk in a cotton-broker's office, and 
found a more profitable market for his writings at 
the North. It was about this time that "Scribner's 
Monthly " began to publish short tales of Creole life 
by Mr. Cable. From the first these received a 
warm welcome, which was due solely to their 
merits, for the writer was unheralded and unknown. 
They were something entirely new in literature. 

Nobody, with knowledge of the theme 

First stories. ■' \ ^ 

and ability to treat it, had seriously 
attempted to depict the Creole in fiction, and Mr. 
Cable was therefore fortunate enough to offer the 
novel-reader that which he dearly loves, an entirely 
new sensation. The true epicure does not welcome 



GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 265 

with more enthusiasm a cook who has invented a 
new and delicious sauce, than the devotee of the 
novel shows in the reception of a writer who 
transports him into the midst of hitherto unknown 
types of character and a strange social atmosphere. 

These stories were written under difBculties that 
would have discouraged most men. The author's 
clerical employment filled the ordinary working 
hours of the day, and he was compelled to do his 
work in minutes snatched from what time most 
young men give to sleep or social relaxation. It 
was his habit to rise at four o'clock and write before 
breakfast, and some of his best work was done in 
these early morning hours. Those who maintain 
that if a young man has any genius in him it will 
somehow find expression under the most unfavor- 
able circumstances, will find much to support their 
thesis in the life of Mr. Cable. After all, we 
probably waste our sentiment on the "mute, inglo- 
rious Miltons" and those "who die with all their 
music in them " of whom poets sing so pathetically. 
Mute, inglorious Miltons and voiceless singers they 
would doubtless have remained had they peraspera 
been born with golden spoons in their ^'^^^*''^- 
mouths. But such application as Mr. Cable's is 
trying to nerve and muscle, and we need not wonder 
that this constant brain and pen work caused more 
than one break-down in health. It was fortunate 
for him that the death of the head of his house in 
1879 again left him without employment, and in a 



266 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

way forced him to take the bold step of devoting 
himself to literature. It was a great risk; for 
though he had won a place for himself as a magazine 
writer, he had yet to show that he had staying 
power or was capable of something really great. 
Only one of a thousand succeeds in such an experi- 
ment, but Mr. Cable proceeded to prove that he 
was one of a thousand. 



III. 

The same year that marked the beginning of a 
purely literary life saw the publication of Mr. 
creoieiife Cablc's first volumc, "Old Creole Days," 
in fiction. ^ collection of seven stories of Creole 
life. They had not only the good fortune already 
mentioned, of freshness of substance, but the addi- 
tional advantage of novelty of form. Mr. Cable 
was one of the pioneers in the dialect tale, and 
dialect was not reckoned in those days as something 
to be forgiven an author, but as one of his titles 
to distinction, provided it were skilfully managed. 
The " New Orleans Picayune " was at that time 
proud of the fledgling it had shoved out from the 
nest to try his wings in literature, and not afraid to 
speak the truth about him; so it said: "The careful 
rendering of the Creole dialect reveals patient study 
of living models; and to any reader whose ear is 
accustomed to the broken English as heard in the 
parts of our city every day, its truth to nature is 



GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 267 

striking." It hardly needed testimony of this kind 
to establish the accuracy of Mr. Cable's literary 
methods, for his stories are self- evidencing, and 
anybody who should challenge their faithfulness 
would have a large fund of incredulity to overcome. 
The adequacy of his representations of Creole life 
has, indeed, been challenged by authorities worthy 
of respect. It is one thing to maintain that his 
work is faithful as far as it goes, and another to 
hold that it is exhaustive. Mr. Cable has never 
made this absurd claim, and no friend has made it 
on his behalf. 

These stories established their author's right to 
be numbered with the greatest artists of American 
literature. It has appeared from his his- 

Great artist. 

tory that he is mainly a self-educated 
man, with no literary atmosphere, no association 
with men of letters, to influence his development. 
So far as can be judged, until he was able to buy 
for himself, his access to books was very limited. 
A natural aptitude for literature, an innate gift of 
expression, improved by much practice and severe 
self-criticism, gave him command of a style almost 
perfect for his purposes. It is a style of limpid 
clearness, of easy grace, not much given to orna- 
mentation, and pleasingly destitute of mannerisms; 
a style of pure English, instinct .with life and 
passion, sometimes reaching the borderland of 
poetry, but still oftener delighting by its delicate 
humor. In these stories lausrhter and tears lie near 



268 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

together, their pathos and even tragedy being as 
true and moving as their humor. It is seldom 
given to any author to sweep the whole gamut of 
human emotions with a touch so sure, yet so light 
and easeful, as that of Mr. Cable. 

This first volume, delightful as it was, did not 

prove that the author had the constructive power 

necessary to the writing of a novel. He 

Novels. . ■' ° 

might easily have been such an one as 
Bret Harte, a writer of unsurpassed short stories 
who loses his cunning when he undertakes to fill in 
a large canvas. A painter would say of a writer of 
this type that his drawing and coloring are good, 
but that he cannot compose. Mr. Cable set all 
doubts of his quality at rest by immediately pro- 
ducing "The Grandissimes, " which, after running 
as a serial in "Scribner's," was published in book 
form in 1880, This was followed in 1881 by 
"Madame Delphine, " and in 1883 by "Dr. Sevier." 
Here is a trio of books not easily equalled in re- 
cent American literature, and probably never sur- 
passed, certainly not among fictions distinctively 
"American." For not the most fastidious of for- 
eign critics can withhold that adjective from Mr. 
Cable's work, it is so obviously autochthonous, — 
it could by no possibility have been written by 
any one but -an American who had studied the 
Creole character from the life, and had known from 
boyhood the scenes among which his characters 
move. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 269 

Since the publication of these books Mr. Cable 
has produced no more novels, though he has written 
a number of stories that might be called 

Later writings. 

novelettes. Three of these — " Grande 
Pointe," " Carancro," and ** Au Large " — have been 
included in one volume under the general title of 
" Bonaventure " (1887). This book, one is justified 
in saying, is not so much a novel as a collection of 
novelettes. A still more recent book, " Strange 
True Stories of Louisiana," is rather compiled and 
revised by Mr. Cable than written by him, being 
composed of manuscripts by various inexperienced 
writers, that he has retouched. This is a sort of 
literary collaboration that is likely to cause him 
more annoyance than it can bring him fame, since 
some of the original writers have made public 
accusations of unfair treatment, which, however 
unfounded they are, must be unpleasant in the 
extreme. 

It would not be fair to say that in the trio of 
novels above named Mr. Cable had exhausted his 
resources, but we are perhaps warranted in con- 
cluding that in them his genius found, for the time 
at least, its full expression, since in the ten years 
that succeeded the publication of "Dr. Sevier" he 
had no other message of the kind to speak to the 
world. By waiting until "the angel says, Write," 
he proved that he respects himself, his public, and 
his art too much to produce his yearly volume, 
whether it be good or bad. 



270 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



IV. 

Mr. Cable is remarkable among American novel- 
ists for a rare combination of aesthetic and religious 
A rare com- cndowmcnts. In no other American 
bination. fiction, unlcss it be in Hawthorne's, do 

we find the highest artistic instinct and the pro- 
foundest moral purpose so wedded. In truth, even 
the exception of Hawthorne cannot be allowed, for 
he is psychologic rather than moral, an observer and 
analyzer of moral problems, and coldly critical, not 
sympathetic, in his treatment of them. But in Mr. 
Cable the moral purpose is almost stronger than the 
aesthetic instinct; rather they exist in his work in 
a balance so perfect that neither can be said to 
overtop the other. The worship of the beautiful and 
the worship of the good are in general unequally 
yoked together when they are united at all. We 
have aesthetes in plenty, like Wilde and Pater, who 
will discourse eloquently on the holiness of beauty; 
and there is no lack of divines who will discourse 
with equal eloquence on the beauty of holiness; but 
not to one man of letters in generations is it given 
to see and to understand and to embody both. 

It is this unique combination that has embroiled 

Mr. Cable with his former friends and admirers in 

the South. All that he afterwards said 

Slavery. 

in "The Silent South" and "The Negro 
Question " is potentially present in his fiction. He 



GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 2/1 

is, as has been said before, the son of one slave- 
holder and the grandson of another, — of two others, 
for that matter, — but nothing can make one believe 
that he could ever have been a slave-owner himself, 
not even if slaves had come to him by inheritance. 
If this seems too positive an utterance, let the 
doubter read the history of Bras-Coupe in "The 
Grandissimes. " No abolitionist ever scourged the 
institution of slavery with words more fiery than 
those that tell that hideous tale. Yet Southerners 
tolerated this, if they did not precisely admire it. 
The reason is plain : slavery was a defunct institu- 
tion, and nothing in this world is deader than a 
dead political issue. Slavery, that caused the blood- 
iest civil war known to history in 1861, had not a 
living apologist twenty years later; and where a 
disrespectful word would once have been another 
name for suicide, burning sarcasm and piercing 
irony passed unresented if not quite approved. 

But when Mr. Cable ventured to touch a political 
question of his day, when he tired of denouncing a 
dead abuse and dared to drag into the unpopularity 
light a monstrous living wrong, — ah, that '" *' ^°""'- 
was quite another story. Languid indifference 
changed with the rapidity of thought to fierce 
hatred. Toleration gave place to abuse, and would 
have given place to persecution had not Mr. Cable, 
fortunately for himself, placed himself beyond the 
reach of anything but bad language. This outburst 
of impotent rage was far from creditable to the 



2/2 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

South. Mr. Cable may have been wrong, — many 
Northern readers, who might be expected to agree 
with him, think that he is wrong, or at any rate 
only partially right, — but his courage was worthy 
of respect, and he should have been answered with 
fact and argument, not with billingsgate. Even 
less creditable than their angry replies has been the 
suggestion by Southern writers of unworthy motives 
on Mr. Cable's part, — that he desired to curry favor 
with his Northern public, and to do this was willing 
to turn his pen against his own people. The insinu- 
ation is worse than base, it is silly. Mr. Cable 

Courage that already had the favor of Northern read- 
deserved ad- , , , - 1 . r 1 1 
miration. ers, and he had nothmg further to de- 
sire in this direction. He was recognized as the 
peer of Howells and James and Aldrich, and what- 
ever he might write on political or social questions 
could not set him higher. Without the possibil- 
ity or the hope of advancing his own fortunes, 
he deliberately risked his popularity among his 
own people to tell them what he believed to be the 
truth. Courage like this deserved the admiration 
that we of the North do not hesitate to award to 
the valor of those who fought so well in what we 
firmly believe to have been a bad cause. 

Perhaps the feeling against Mr. Cable in the 
South is due not merely to what he has written, 
Residence in ^ut to thc fact that hc has taken up his 
the North. residence in the North. It should be 
borne in mind, however, that the temptation for a 



GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. 273 

Southern man of letters to do this is almost over- 
whelming. However proud the South may be of 
its writers, it does not offer them an adequate sup- 
port. It is Northern capital that publishes the 
books of Southern writers. Northern enterprise 
pushes their sale, and Northern readers for the 
most part buy them. A writer who chooses, as 
Mr. Cable did for several years, to add to his 
income by giving public readings from his writings, 
must look to Northern cities for his audiences. 
Since this is so, and so long as it continues to be 
so, a Northern residence must offer great advan- 
tages. It is a convenience for a writer to be near 
his publishers, for a lecturer to be within easy reach 
of his audiences, even in these days when telegraph 
and fast express almost annihilate space. Besides, 
since when has a man lost the right in free America 
to live where he chooses and to change his resi- 
dence as often as he pleases .>' 

The feeling against Mr. Cable will pass away. 
His political writings are a mere episode in his life, 
and are necessarily ephemeral. In after years the 
antiquarian and the historian may curiously peer 
into their pages, if perchance a copy survives, but 
his fictions are as imperishable as the language. 
The South will yet come to a better mind, and will 
see in Mr. Cable one of her most gifted sons, — not 
infallible, but honest, high-minded, and courageous, 
possessed, in a word, of the very virtues always 



274 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

most admired and cherished by his compatriots. 
And his books will stand forth, while American 
literature is read, as a perfect picture of a unique 
civilization, unsurpassed in finish among the work 
of his time, and inspired by that love of God and 
one's neighbor which is more than all whole burnt 
offerings and sacrifices. 



XVII. 

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

LITERATURE is a great stafif, but a sorry 
crutch." That is as true to-day as when 
Scott said it, and it is true, because, in the words of 
Mr. Froude, " Hterature happens to be the only oc- 
cupation in which wages are not given in proportion 
to the goodness of the work done." It is doubtless a 
fact that the born writer finds in his labor his highest 
compensation, but this is no more true of "The times 

^ are out of 

him than of any other worker who puts joi"'-" 
heart and soul into his occupation, and is not a mere 
hireling. The laborer is worthy of his hire, whatever 
his labor. Whoever devotes himself to an occupation 
that has for its result the ennobling of his race, the 
enrichment of men's minds, the enlargement of their 
field of mental and moral vision, is fairly entitled to a 
comfortable living. The world owes at least this to 
him. And yet, unless he possesses the happy faculty 
of making his writings salable, unless he is willing to 
produce merely what men will buy and leave undone 
the higher work of which he is capable, the writer 
may starve for all the world cares. The life and 
work of Mr. Stoddard are a saddening instance 



276 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

of the short-sightedness of mankind, of the imper- 
fection of our present social order, of the way in 
which a man may be compelled to waste endow- 
ments of a high order, that he may wring from a 
niggard world a bare subsistence. 



I. 



Mr. Stoddard was born in Hingham, Mass., July 

2, 1825. He lost his father, a sea-captain, at an early 

age, and in 1835 his mother, who had married again, 

removed to New York. Since then his life 

Early years. , 

has been identified with the life of the 
metropolis. His education, such as it was, he gained 
in the public schools of the city, but it could not have 
extended beyond a rather limited course in the ordi- 
nary English branches. While still a mere lad he 
went to work in an iron foundry, and remained there 
several years. Had he been just an ordinary, average 
boy, with a shrewd gift of making a good bargain and 
a half miserly capacity for saving money, and had he 
devoted himself with all his soul to the iron business, 
he might have died many times a millionnaire, envied 
by all and possibly respected by some. He chose the 
better part. He preferred lifelong poverty, compara- 
tively speaking, and the culture of mind and heart, to 
wealth and narrowness. If, as Seneca thinks, the gods 
are well pleased when they see great men contending 
with adversity, Mr. Stoddard must have afforded the 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD 277 

gods much delight, for his Hfe has been one struggle 
with adverse fortune. 

None of our American authors has begun a literary- 
career with less of outward encouragement or with 
a more slender stock of endowment. By endow- 
ment, one of course means visible qualification. For 
one so slightly educated, compelled to slight encour- 
labor for daily bread, with neither leisure ^^ement. 
for culture nor friends to encourage and assist him, 
— for such a lad to cherish literary aspirations 
would have seemed to most people a ridiculous 
height of presumption. And so it would have been 
in one less clearly conscious of his calling. " Blessed 
are they that hunger and thirst after knowledge, for 
they shall be filled," is a beatitude not written in 
Scripture, it is true; but it is written in the divine 
order of the universe, and it was fulfilled in the case 
of young Stoddard. His evenings were given to the 
study of the best English authors, and particularly of 
the poets. Already his soul was fired with the thought 
that he too would yet be a poet. 

What did more than all else to develop this hope, 
this aspiration, into a reality was his good fortune in 
making the acquaintance of other young men of let- 
ters in New York, — Bayard Taylor, Edmund Clarence 
Stedman, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and others. The 
acquaintance with Taylor was earliest. Budding 
most intimate, and had the greatest effect ^"'^°''^- 
on his character. Taylor was fresh from Europe and 
the publication of his " Views Afoot," which had given 



2/8 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

him a recognized standing among young authors. 
Stoddard was his junior only a few months by the 
calendar, but several years his junior in literary ex- 
perience, and as yet wholly unknown to fame. Both 
had to give their days to hard toil, — Stoddard to his 
foundry and Taylor to the " Tribune," where he 
worked fifteen hours a day, scribbhng leaders, book- 
notices, foreign letters, and generally doing the work 
now assigned to three or four men on the " Tribune" 
staff. Only their evenings were theirs, and of these 
but one, Saturday evening, was really free. These 
Saturday nights were passed in each other's company, 
and they were in a sense the making of Stoddard. 
They drew out of him what was latent; intelligent and 
sympathetic companionship supplemented the culture 
he was gaining from books and the practice of com- 
position, and under this genial stimulus his powers 
rapidly expanded. 

The same year (1849) that witnessed the beginning 

of this friendship, which was to be broken only by 

Taylor's untimely death, also saw the pub- 

FootpriutS. , 1 r 1 y r 1 

lication of the youthful poet s first volume 
of verses, under the title of " Footprints." It was 
privately printed, and he was so little proud of it that 
he afterward destroyed the edition. 

" 'T is pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print ; 
A book 's a book, although there 's nothing in 't." 

Many a young bardling enjoys this pleasure at his 
own expense, but few have the grace to repent their 
folly so promptly, and to repair it by the one means 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 279 

in their power. There is hope for such, and their 
second ventures are likely to be worthier of a better 
fate. 

Soon after this another great event befell the poet. 
His friend Taylor went to Europe again. The young 
poet was lonely, he had a present none too assured, 
and a future still less certain, so he naturally married. 
His fortune was better than perhaps so ^, . 

'■ ■*• Marnage. 

headlong an act deserved, and could 
hardly have been greater had he acted with the most 
approved worldly wisdom. Elizabeth Barstow, also 
of Massachusetts birth, was the exact counterpart of 
Mr. Stoddard in the other sex. She, too, was and is 
a poet whose graceful verses are worthy of high praise, 
but she has taken even higher rank as a novelist. It 
is really one of the curiosities of literature that her 
books have not won a wider recognition, a more 
general admiration, from readers of American fiction. 
They are high favorites, and have been from the first, 
of those who are fitted to appreciate work of enduring 
qualities, and they will continue to be read when cur- 
rent trash has fallen to its real value as junk. There 
have been some signs of late that tardy fame is about 
to overtake Mrs. Stoddard, and one hopes that the 
event may justify this forecast. This union of hearts 
and labors is almost the one instance of the kind in 
American literature, — at least, it is almost the only 
one that has endured for an ordinary lifetime all the 
vicissitudes of fortune, growing more beautiful and 
more helpful with every passing year. 



2 So AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 



II. 

By 1 85 1 Mr. Stoddard was fairly launched in litera- 
ture. He published that year a second volume of 
verse, that ranked him at once among the promising 
young poets ; and this was followed in 1856 by " Songs 
Songs of <^f Summer," which set his name still higher 

Summer. ^^ ^^^ ^.^^^ j^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^j^^^ 

dollars in poetry, however, and was compelled to turn 
his hand to work of various kinds to secure a liveli- 
hood. Through Hawthorne's influence, it is said, he 
obtained in 1853 a clerkship in the New York Custom 
House, which he held until 1870, after which he held 
other like positions for periods more or less brief, 
until in 1879 he plunged into literature once for all, 
sink or swim. He has never sunk, but one may 
guess that he has often found it hard swimming. 

It would not be easy to name the other American 
author who has done so much hard work for so insig- 
nificant pay. Mr. Stoddard has been all his life a 
most laborious man, working harder than any mechanic 
in town and receiving wages but little better than 
those of a clever mechanic. Most of this labor has 
Pegasus a been mere hack work. One says this in no 
plough-horse, disparagement of Mr. Stoddard, or of the 
usefulness of what he has done, but in hot indignation 
of soul that Pegasus should thus be put to the plough. 
It is we, the public, who are to blame for such a state 
of things ; we should take shame to ourselves that we 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 28 1 

have allowed such a man to fritter away his powers 
on work that any penny-a-liner could do, — not so 
well, doubtless, but well enough, Mr. Stoddard has 
not complained; he has borne his burden as a brave 
man should, cheerfully, nobly, but the iron must have 
entered into his soul. 

The critic will be justified in passing by all of this 
work with a brief word of praise for its conscientious- 
ness. It was not written to live, but to live by. Mr. 
Stoddard has written prose because he must; he 
writes poetry because he cannot help it. His prose 
writings may be, without any disrespect to them or 
him, simply labelled " pot boilers " and laid aside. 
They fulfilled their purpose when they jjj^ 
amused a passing hour, or set afloat again ^"""s^- 
a half-forgotten piece of standard literature. The 
author deserves for this part of his labor precisely 
the praise that a good maker of shoes deserves, — 
he has put his heart and conscience into the task by 
which he wins his daily bread, and has done it well. 
But task work it is, and task work it will remain. 



III. 

The case is totally different, however, when we 
come to Mr. Stoddard's poetry. We are conscious 
in a moment of breathing a different atmosphere. 
In the prose writings we find him a workman, here 
we find him an artist; in the former he is honest, 



282 AMERICAN WRIIERS OF TO-DAY. 

cultivated, painstaking, conscientious, but in the 
latter he is a man of genius. 

Besides the volumes of verse already named, he 
published "The King's Bell" (1863), "The Book 
Twobooks of ^^ East" (1871), and a complete 
of verse. edition of his poetical works in 1880, 

which makes a book of nearly five hundred pages. 
This is not a remarkably bulky tome, considering 
the fact that it represents a lifetime's devotion to 
the muses; but when one also considers the dis- 
tractions and difficulties under which the work has 
been done, it is a striking proof of what has already 
been said, — that Mr. Stoddard writes poetry because 
he cannot help doing it. 

The striking characteristic of the earlier poems, 
included in the edition of 1880, is the passionate 
love of beauty that inspires them. If one were to 
pay Mr. Stoddard the insulting compliment of call- 
ing him "The American ," one would instinct- 
ively fill out the blank with the name of 

Keats. J. , 

Keats after reading some of these poems. 
The style is not that of Keats, the resemblance is 
not verbal and formal, such as results from imita- 
tion; it is only that the youthful American poet 
was a twin soul of the Briton. If a reader should 
find such verses, for example, in a collection of 
extracts from Keats, he would feel no incongruity, 
though he might say, " From what poem by Keats 
are these taken ? I do not remember to have seen 
them before." 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 283 

" From earliest infancy my heart was thine, 

With childish feet I trod thy temple aisles ; 

Not knowing tears, I worshipped thee with smiles, 
Or if I wept it was with joy divine. 
By day, and night, on land, and sea, and air, 

I saw thee everywhere. 
A voice of greeting from the wind was sent. 

The mists enfolded me with soft white arms, 
The birds did sing to lap me in content, 

The rivers wore their charms, 
And every little daisy in the grass 
Did look up in my face, and smile to see me pass." 

These lines are taken from a " Hymn to the 
Beautiful ; " and possibly the form of the stanza and 
its musical quality, as well as the title, 

Prodigal fancy. 

might suggest to the reader Shelley and 
his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." But whatever 
poets may have strongly influenced Mr. Stoddard 
in his earlier years, no one poet dominated him. 
His was a catholic taste, a universal worship of the 
beautiful, and he could appreciate what was good or 
great in every English poet. As his mind matured, 
these suggestions of other poets disappear from his 
verse, and his style becomes more distinctive, more 
individual. The passion for beauty, however, does 
not become weaker. In the "Songs of Summer," 
published during the flower of his young manhood, 
there is almost a tropical luxuriance of feeling, and a 
prodigality of fancy not always matched by felicity 
of expression. The emphasis sometimes seems 
overstrained, and the thought is not always strictly 



284 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

coherent. Other American men of letters have 
amused themselves by parodying this manner, some- 
times with very amusing results. There is, how- 
ever, much verse in this collection that shows full 
mastery of the poet's art, and some of the gems 
that one can find here and there are of the first 
water ; for instance, this, — 

" The sky is a drinking-cup, 
That was overturned of old, 
And it pours in the eyes of men 
Its wine of airy gold. 

" We drink that wine all day, 

Till the last drop is drained up, 
And we are lighted off to bed 
By the jewels in the cup ! " 



IV. 

In his later poems, Mr. Stoddard has essayed 
some higher flights. Some of his narrative poems 
are rare examples of the art of telling a story in 
verse; among which may be named "The King's 
Bell," "The King's Sentinel," and "The Pearl of 
the Philippines." This is not a gift that is greatly 
valued in these days, more 's the pity, and the poet 
who has it is pretty sure to conclude that 

" There 's a luck in most things, and in none 
More than in being born at the right time ; 
It boots not what the labor to be done, 
Or feats of arms, or art, or building rhyme. 
Not that the heavens the little can make great, 
But many a man has hyed an age too late." 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 285 

Of a quality better appreciated by readers, if not 
more highly praised by critics, are such poems as 
the Horatian ode on Abraham Lincoln, odeon 
which one is much inclined to pronounce ^""=°'°' 
not only the best thing Mr. Stoddard has ever 
written, but the best thing any poet has written on 
Lincoln, saving only Mr. Lowell's unapproached 
" Commemoration Ode. " There are in it fewer lines 
felicitously quotable than in Lowell's ode, yet 
such as the following come little short of that 
excellence : — 

" One of the People ! Born to be 
Their curious epitome." 

" No hasty fool, of stubborn will, 
But prudent, cautious, pliant still." 

. . . " his genius put to scorn 
The proudest in the purple born. 

Whose wisdom never grew 

To what, untaught, he knew." 

Quite perfect, both in thought and expression, is 
the tender poem " Adsum," on the death of Thack- 
eray; and quite as appreciative, though less tenderly 
pathetic, are the verses entitled "At Gadshill. " 
One cannot highly commend what are perhaps the 
most ambitious performances in this edition of 
1880, — "Guests of the State," a centen- occasional 
nial ode, and "History," a poem in ^°^™^' 
Spenserian stanza read before the Phi Beta Kappa 



286 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Society of Harvard. To attempt to write a great 
poem for a great occasion is to invite failure, and 
the few who succeed do so by some fortunate acci- 
dent. Occasional poems for the most part, except 
such witty and familiar verses as the "Autocrat" 
succeeds in turning off, have added more to the 
bulk than to the glory of American literature. 

One who goes through this edition of Mr. Stod- 
dard's verse carefully, checking off only those 
Popular poems without which American literature 

Ignorance. ly^rould bc distinctly poorcr, will have a 
new idea of the extent and value of the work the 
poet has done. The contemporary fame of authors 
furnishes some of the most curious puzzles of liter- 
ature. That Southey should ever have been con- 
sidered a great poet while Shelley was practically 
unknown, is something that we of to-day can never 
fully comprehend ; and the history of literature is 
full of just such strange facts. Mention the poems 
of Stoddard to intelligent and well-read friends, — 
who know their Lowell and Bryant, their Stedman 
and Aldrich, and who know Stoddard the clever 
magazinist and editor of books, — and one is likely 
to be met by the saying, "Why, I never knew that 
he wrote any poetry." So astounding ignorance in 
quarters where knowledge might fairly be expected 
is inexplicable, unless, indeed, it be due to this, 
that as prolific essayist and industrious editor, Mr. 
Stoddard has eclipsed himself as poet. Certainly, 
for whatever cause, he is less known to Americans, 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 287 

even to those who love the literature of their 
country, than he deserves to be. This cannot 
always remain true. The man who has a genuine 
call to write may say with Philip of Spain, " I and 
time against any two," — nay, against the world. 

Much as he merits our praise and admiration for 
what he has actually done, this is a man who still 
more should receive our homage for what ^ priceless 
he has attempted. It is something in ^''^™p^^- 
these days, when the sordid and selfish. pursuit of 
wealth absorbs so much of what is best in the 
youth of America, to have this example of unswerv- 
ing choice of the intellectual life. It is some- 
thing, shall we say.? It is a priceless thing, should 
rather be said. The average man of affairs, to 
whom getting rich is the chief end of man, and 
poverty the unpardonable sin, can see nothing but 
the extreme of folly in a life given to literature for 
the love of the work and not for love of its rewards. 
To those who know the true values of things there 
is an element of heroism, of greatness of soul, in 
such a life. America will never be quite given 
over to the worship of the Almighty Dollar, she 
will never be chained to Mammon's chariot wheels, 
while she has here and there a son who turns his 
face ever towards "the shining, unveiled face of 
truth." 



XVIII. 

FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 

AMERICAN humor has now a world-wide re- 
pute, and is enjoyed if not appreciated by an 
international audience. The goddess of fame has 
been more lavish than discriminating in the distri- 
bution of her favors to American humorists. It is 
a single type of humor that has become known to 
American foreign rcadcrs as distinctively American, 
humor. —the type of which Artemus Ward and 

Mark Twain (in a part of his writings) are the best 
representatives. This humor is broad; it deals 
largely in exaggeration; it produces gales of merri- 
ment by a fortunate jest; it lacks delicacy, con- 
structive power, and literary form. Foreign critics, 
who are more distinguished for refined taste than 
for profound knowledge of things American, seldom 
speak with much respect of American humor. It 
may be well adapted, they concede, to tickle the 
ears of the groundlings, but it makes the judicious 
grieve. We who are to the manner born know the 
weak spot in this criticism. We know that America 
has produced another type of humor, and appreciate 
at its true value the courtly polish of Irving, the 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKrON. 289 

catholic and urbane manner of Lowell, the playful, 
half-bantering earnestness of Warner. To this 
school belongs the subject of this paper, and he 
alone would redeem our humorists from the charge 
of coarseness and want of literary charm. 



"I. 

When he first began writing fantastic tales for 
children, the author signed them "Frank R. Stock- 
ton," and that name still holds its place 

Early years. 

on the titlepages of his books. His 
proper Christian names are, however, Francis 
Richard, and he was born in Philadelphia, April 
5, 1834. He had a good education, being gradu- 
ated from the Central high-school of his native city 
in 1852, but, like many of our successful American 
authors, he did not have a college training. His 
first choice of occupation was that of engraver and 
draughtsman, but his bent was literary rather than 
artistic, and he found his way into journalism. It 
would have been rather remarkable had such not 
been the case, as a marked tendency towards litera- 
ture distinguishes his family. A younger brother 
was a journalist of distinction; an elder half- 
brother was an honored Methodist clergyman and 
author; and a sister, though she has been somewhat 
eclipsed by his greater fame, is known as a writer 
of excellent stories for the magazines, and of several 
books. Mr. Stockton was connected for brief 

19 



290 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

periods with various newspapers and periodicals, 
and on the establishment of " St. Nicholas " became 
its assistant editor. There is reason to believe that 
his editorial work was of excellent character; but 
both his tastes and his gifts were rather for original 
work, and for nearly or quite twenty years now he 
has given himself to the writing of stories. As 
early as 1870 four of his tales for children were 
issued in book form by a Boston publisher, under 
the title of "The Ting-a ling Stories," and there- 
after he was known to the initiated as " a promising 
writer. " 

Mr. Stockton first gained the ear of the great 
public in 1879, when a series of papers with a 
Rudder slight thread of story appeared serially in 

Grange. " Scribner's Monthly," and later in a 

volume, under the title of "Rudder Grange." The 
story of the young couple keeping house in a canal- 
boat and taking a boarder was irresistibly funny, 
and the details were worked out with great skill. 
Euphemia and Pomona became household words at 
once; their droll sayings and droller doings gave 
many a pleasant hour of reminiscence, long after 
the enjoyment of the first reading had been experi- 
enced. The supreme test of the quality of humor 
is its capacity to yield continuous pleasure. There 
are things that make one laugh consumedly at first 
hearing, as if their author 

" Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
And resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life." 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 29 1 

But jests of this sort never seem so funny, after 
the first surprise has been felt. The best humor, 
like good wine, improves with age, and with each 
subsequent reading enjoyment grows. "Rudder 
Grange " bears this test ; it is as fresh and charm- 
ing now as when it was first written, and a new 
reading after it has been half forgotten will be even 
more relishful than the first. 

Not even this book, well deserved as was its 
success, gave Mr. Stockton so wide a fame as one 
of his short stories, "The Lady or the Lady or the 
Tiger?" The artful way in which he ^'^"'' 
led his readers up to the crucial problem and then 
betrayed their confidence by refusing to solve it, 
cloaking this refusal under a pretext of inability to 
decide the question he had raised, was a stroke of 
humor that showed genius. It also showed com- 
mercial shrewdness, and had its reward. Curiosity 
was piqued, discussion was provoked, and debate on 
the merits of the question became quite a social 
"fad." When one thinks on what a slender basis 
literary fame is sometimes built, how fortuitous the 
gaining of it generally is, how frequently the public 
admires an author for that which is not best and 
most characteristic in his work, the stir that fol- 
lowed the publication of this story becomes more 
humorous than anything in the story itself. Since 
that time there has been not only a ready market, 
but an eager public, for whatever Mr. Stockton 
might write. He has not been tempted, however, 



292 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

to over-production. He has never shaken from the 
tree the unripe fruits of his imagination merely 
because they would sell, but has left them to grow 
and ripen and mellow. 



11. 

As no reader will have failed to infer, Mr. 

Stockton is first of all a clever writer of short 

stories. Collections of his magazine 

Short stories. 

stories have been made at various times 
since 1884: "The Lady or the Tiger.?" "The 
Christmas Wreck," "The Bee Man of Orn, " "Amos 
Kilbright," "The Clocks of Rondaine," and "The 
Watchmaker's Wife," — each volume containing, 
besides the title story, several other tales. These 
volumes show Mr. Stockton's peculiar powers at their 
best, and they give him an unquestioned place in 
the front rank of American story-writers. It is 
true that these tales of his violate certain conven- 
tions of literary art. They seldom have a plot; 
they frequently have no dialogue, consisting wholly 
or mainly of narrative or monologue; there is not 
much description, and no apparent attempt at effect. 
One would say that stories constructed on such a 
plan could hardly fail to be tedious, however brief, 
since they lack so many of the things that other 
storytellers rely upon for effects. Mr. Stockton's 
method is vindicated by its success, not by its a 
priori reasonableness. There is such a thing, no 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 293 

doubt, as " good form " in every performance that 
demands skill ; but, after all, the main point is to do 
the thing. David's smooth stones from the brook 
seemed a very ineffective weapon with which to 
encounter a giant, and every military authority of 
the age would have pronounced his attempt hope- 
less; but Goliath found, to his cost, that the shep- 
herd's sling was mightier than the warrior's sword 
and spear. The Western oarsmen who His method 

vindicated by 

rowed by the light of nature, and never- success. 
theless beat crews trained to row scientifically, 
explained that theirs was called the "git thar" 
stroke. Mr. Stockton's method of story-telling 
may be similarly defined; it succeeds with him, 
but in another's hands it would very likely be 
a failure. 

It must not be inferred that these stories lack 
literary merit. The contrary is the fact, as a 
critical study of them discloses. Take Literary 
one of the purely narrative stories, for '"^"^®' 
example, like "A Tale of Negative Gravity." It 
is told with so much of positive gravity, in so 
matter-of-fact a style, that one almost swallows it 
whole, — almost, but not quite. Now let one 
analyze that story, try to imitate its simple style, 
and however practised he may be in the art of 
expression he will finish his experiment with a new 
respect for the author's purely literary gifts. From 
one point of view Mr. Stockton may almost be said 
to have no style. There is nothing, one means, in 



294 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY, 

the mere turn of his sentences, in his method of 
expression, that can be seized upon as character- 
istic, and laid away in memory as a sort of trade- 
mark by which the author's other work may be 
tested, judged, and identified. It is very plain, 
simple, flowing English, this style of Stockton's, 
the sort of writing that appears to the inexperienced 
the easiest thing in the world to do — until they 
have tried. The art that conceals art, until it can 
pass for nature itself, — that, we are continually 
told, is the highest type, and the secret of that Mr. 
Stockton has somehow caught. 

These tales stamp their author as one of the most 

original of American writers. Though his style 

lacks mannerism or distinctive flavor, it 

Originality. 

is not SO With the substance of his work. 
That has plenty of flavor, flavor of a kind so pecu- 
liar that his work could never by any accident be 
mistaken for that of any other writer. It might be 
not the easiest of tasks to tell whether an anony- 
mous essay or story should be fathered upon Mr. 
Howells or Mr. Aldrich; but it requires no such 
nicety of literary taste to recognize a story of Mr. 
Stockton's. One who has sufficient accuracy of 
taste to distinguish between a slice of roast beef 
and a raw potato, so to speak, will know the savor 
of his work wherever it is met. Other writers may 
be as original, in the strict sense of that term, but 
few, if any, are so individual, so unmistakably 
themselves and nobody else. 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 295 



III. 

Most writers of short stories sooner or later 
are tempted to try their wings in the longer 
flight of a novel. It seems to be just very like 
about an even chance whether they sue ^^''"''^^• 
ceed or fail, so different are the conditions of the 
two classes of fiction. One dislikes to use the 
word failure in connection with any of Mr. Stock- 
ton's work, yet "The Late Mrs. Null" and "The 
Hundredth Man " fall very far short of the relative 
excellence of his tales. The plots are very in- 
genious, the mystery surrounding Mrs. Null until 
the very last being quite worthy of Wilkie Collins; 
the dialogue is bright and amusing; considerable 
power of characterization is shown in these novels, 
a thing almost wholly absent from the tales. Yet 
withal there is a lack of power, and while the books 
are clever tours de force they are not work of lasting 
worth. 

Why this should be is something of a puzzle, 
since writers of far less originality and force than 
Mr. Stockton have produced betterjnovels. 

A puzzle. 

The ingenious reader may easily propose 
to himself several explanations, of which the follow- 
ing may be the most satisfactory, since it seems to 
fit all the facts known to the public. Mr. Stock- 
ton's peculiar power is best described by the word 
"droll." He excels in that juxtaposition of incon- 



296 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

gruities that is the essence of humor. Only, in his 
case, the incongruity is commonly not of ideas but 
of acts and situations; the incongruity of ideas is 
not put into words, as is the wont of most humorists, 
but suggested to the reader, suggested often with 
great delicacy and subtlety. The production of 
this effect on the mind of the reader is one that 
cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point without 
wearying him. A joke that a friend takes fifteen 
minutes to tell us is not likely to have a very sharp 
point when the end finally comes, and a writer who 
spins out his drollery to three hundred pages will 
find it becoming a weariness to the flesh. The 
very thing that constitutes Mr. Stockton's power 
in a story that can be read in a half-hour constitutes 
his weakness in a novel. 

There is one other excellence in his novels for 

which Mr. Stockton has not yet been given credit. 

He has succeeded, at least in his Mrs. Null, in 

giving his story plenty of "local color." 

His local color. => => J f J ^ 

He was at one time a resident of Virginia, 
and the negro dialect and character have seldom 
been represented with a more sympathetic accuracy 
than by him. He may not have penetrated so 
deeply into the very heart of the negro as Mr. Page 
in his "Marse Chan" and other companion stories, 
but he has made himself not a bad second to the 
acknowledged first in this field. 

As might, perhaps, be expected, Mr. Stockton 
has succeeded better in novelettes. Here he is 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 297 

almost as much at home as in the brief tale. "The 
Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine" 
and its sequel, "The Dusantes," reach 

Novelettes 

pretty nearly, if not quite, the high- 
water mark of our author. The first named of these 
stories is one of the best illustrations possible of 
his peculiar gift. The motive of the tale is the 
simplest possible : it is to show how two good New 
England women, bred in a narrow round of duties, 
and wonted to a certain moral and social standard 
of action until it had become second nature, would 
continue to act after their kind in whatever unaccus- 
tomed and startling circumstances they might be 
placed. The humor of the story consists almost 
wholly in the incongruity between the incidents of a 
shipwreck, involving a stay on a desert island, and the 
ingrained notions and habits of these women. This 
theme is treated with so much ingenuity, and with 
a touch so deft as to make of the story one of the 
most humorous things in literature. A little knowl- 
edge of New England village life is necessary to 
its fullest appreciation, but the reader is to be 
pitied whose imagination is not tickled by many of 
the scenes and incidents of this adventure. 

One notes, in reading this story, what he cannot 
have failed to observe elsewhere, that the author 
has caught the trick of lifelike narration. The 
tale, in its sober, matter-of-fact style and its veri- 
similitude, might have been the work of Defoe or 
Hale. Neither of these writers is destitute of 



298 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DA Y. 

humor, especially Dr. Hale, but neither of them 
could have supplied the element in Stockton's 
stories that is their chief charm. The three are 
alike only in their faculty of telling a story so as 
to give it, while one is reading at least, all the 
semblance of the truth itself. 



IV. 

The young folks know a good story-teller by 
instinct, and Mr. Stockton has from the first been 
His"iuve- ^ prime favorite with them. As we have 
"'^^^■' seen, his first book was composed of 

stories for children, and he has gone on writing for 
his youthful readers until his "juveniles" make 
quite a row, seven or more volumes. The best of 
these stories show a gift very similar to that which 
wins the favor of older readers, though it is rather 
a fantastic imagination than pure humor that in- 
spires the best of them. Children, as a rule, have 
a quite rudimentary sense of humor, yet they are 
not incapable of appreciating droll things. They 
perceive most easily, however, that sort of humor 
which builders embody in gargoyles and other simi- 
lar ornamentations, — grotesque distortions of types 
with which they are familiar in every-day life. 
Some of Mr. Stockton's fairy tales show a fertility 
of imagination that surpasses anything he has done 
in his other writings, and their whimsical absurdi- 
ties are so gravely set forth that many a staid father 



FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON. 299 

while reading them to his children has been half 
inclined to accept them as veritable histories. It 
is noteworthy that in these stories the narrow 
line separating the fanciful from the burlesque is 
never crossed. Nobody could suspect from the 
writer's manner that he does not himself firmly 
believe in the reality of his marvellous creations. 
A false note here would be fatal, and none would 
be quicker to detect it than the readers of "St 
Nicholas," where most of these tales have first 
appeared. 

One of these books is of a more conventional 
sort, "A Jolly Fellowship." It is a very good 
story, only — and this is the worst one could say 
of it — a dozen other men might have written it 
as well as Mr. Stockton. It so completely lacks 
his distinctive qualities that, despite its general 
brightness, it must be ranked among his few fail- 
'Ures; or, if that seem too harsh a word, his partial 
successes. 

Mr. Stockton gives no signs of having exhausted 
his vein. He has made for himself a place unique 
and unapproachable in the regard of those who love 
good literature. Original to the verge of eccen- 
tricity, he provokes no comparisons with any writer. 
Nobody has ever thought of calling him "The 
American somebody or other," — a title bestowed 
on his fellow craftsmen, doubtless with an intent 
to compliment, though it is really the direst insult 



300 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

that can be offered to a man of letters, since it 
accuses him of being the weak echo of some Euro- 
pean celebrity. No, the author of " Rudder Grange " 
is not " The American Lamb " nor the American 
anybody else, he is just Frank R. Stockton. 



XIX. 

JOAQUIN MILLER. 

OF a poet, as well as of a prophet, it is some- 
times true that he is not without honor save 
in his own country and among his own people. 
Something very like this might once have been said, 
perhaps might be said even now, of Joaquin Miller. 
There have been American men of letters before our 
day, and there are others in our day, whom our kin 
across the sea rate higher than we are accustomed 
to rate them in America. In no other case easily re- 
called has an American author's fame in his own land 
been little more than the pale reflection „. 

^ tijs vogue in 

of his transatlantic glory. Twenty years England. 
ago Joaquin Miller was the lion of British society; 
he was feted and caressed by the rich and titled ; he 
\yas praised by the chorus of irresponsible, indolent 
reviewers; his books ran through numerous editions 
in two continents, — surely this was fame. The last 
mark of condescending admiration was bestowed 
upon him by his English admirers when one called 
him " The American Byron." The epithet was not 
wholly undeserved, for there were in his writings, as 



302 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Landor said of Byron, " things as strong as poison and 
as original as sin." The British pubHc has, of course, 
long since recovered from its Miller "craze;" the 
critics no longer say that he is the most original 
and probably the greatest of our American poets ; 
and there are few living authors who are now more 
utterly forgotten. Not long ago one who had occa- 
sion to purchase his collected poems, searched New 
York high and low, but not a copy, new or second- 
hand, could he find on sale. Of what other American 
poet, living or dead, could this be true? The sober 
critic hardly knows which phenomenon is the more 
surprising and inexplicable, the suddenness of Mr. 
Miller's undeserved fame, or the completeness of his 
equally undeserved oblivion. 



I. 

CiNClNNATUS HiNER MiLLER — or is it Heine, as 
sometimes written? the authorities differ — was born 
in the Wabash district of Indiana, November lo, 1841. 
His parents moved to Oregon in 1854, and he was 
brought up amid the rough, wild pioneer life of the 
new territory, — surroundings well fitted to nourish 
a poetic imagination, but affording few opportunities 
of culture. His education was picked up anyhow or 
nohow, — mostly the latter, one fancies, for 

Education. 11111 • /-\ 

schools and books were scarce m Oregon 
in those days. Long before he reached manhood 
young Miller seems to have been thrown on his own 



JOAQUIN MILLER. 303 

resources, and to have made trial of more than one 
means of livelihood. He had the inevitable experi- 
ence in mining, and succeeded in it no better than 
Bret Harte; he studied law for a time; he was an 
express messenger in Idaho, — which meant rough 
work, small pay, and the daily risk of life, in those 
days ; he was editor of a paper. This was " seeing 
life " on a pretty generous scale and in a less harm- 
ful way than is affected by the more or less gilded 
youth of our cities. 

The journalistic experience to which allusion has 
been made was very brief. Mr. Miller became editor 
of the "Democratic Register," of Eugene, Oregon, in 
1863, but the paper was soon after suppressed by 
military authority, the editor having been guilty of 
what were deemed disloyal utterances. From what 
can be learned, the paper seems to have been a 
"copperhead " sheet, following the lead of such men 
as Vallandigham, and it doubtless de- 
served its fate. When we recall, however, 
that the editor was but twenty-two years of age, and 
that this was his first venture in politics, — his last, too, 
it would seem, — we shall not pass a harsh sentence 
of condemnation on him. After this conspicuous 
failure, Mr. Miller won something very like success. 
He opened a law office in Canon City, and soon 
gained a fair practice. It was here that one of the 
most exciting adventures of his career befell him. 
According to the story. Canon City was invested 
by hostile Indians, and Miller led an expedition 



304 AMERICAN- WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

against them into their own country; but after a 
long and bloody campaign, he was finally beaten 
back, leaving his dead on the field. As this episode 
is related by the veracious G. Washington Moon, 
Hon. F. R. S. L., one cannot doubt its literal accu- 
racy. Not long after, the young lawyer and Indian- 
fighter was made judge of the Grant County court, 
La erand which office hc held from 1866 to 1870. 
judge. Had he continued in the way he thus 

began, he might have carved out for himself a 
notable career as jurist and public servant. Men 
of far less native endowment and force of character 
have been governors and senators from the new 
States of the West. But his weird was upon him, 
as the Scotch say; he was doomed to the pains and 
penalties, as well as born to the joys, of authorship. 



n. 

Mr. Miller began to write in boyhood, ignorant 
of the rules of versification and even of English 
grammar. He wrote because he was irresistibly 
impelled, and with the least possible encouragement 
from without; for, though he first published a col- 
lection of his verses in paper covers, 
wn ngs. j-j^Qj^gg|.jy calling them " Specimens," and 

later a volume with the title " Joaquin et al.," it does 
not appear that he gained more than a local fame as 
a poet, and not too much even of that. It was hardly 
to be expected that poetry would find a ready market 



JOAQUIN MILLER. 305 

in a new country where every energy was absorbed 
in the struggle to wring from nature a mere 
subsistence. 

For many years he diligently availed himself of such 
means of culture as came within his reach, reading 
with equal pleasure and profit authors ancient and 
modern as they came to hand (the former necessarily 
in translations), and practising his art in secret. He 
cherished the conviction that he was born to be a 
poet, and could he but break his birth's invidious bar 
and grasp the skirts of happy chance, fame and for- 
tune would be his. It was his desire to visit England, 
where, for some reason, he believed that he would 
meet with more encouragement than at yigi^g 
home. The event justified his prescience, ^"^land. 
In 1870 he realized his long-cherished desire, and 
the following year saw the publication in London 
of his " Songs of the Sierras." The same year the 
book also appeared in Boston, with the imprint of 
Roberts Brothers. The name Joaquin, gongofthe 
which appeared on the titlepage, and by ^'^"^^■ 
which only the poet was known for some years, was 
a reminiscence of his legal experience. It had once 
fallen to his lot to defend a Mexican brigand named 
Joaquin Murietta, and he substituted his client's 
Christian name for his own, in the belief, doubtless, 
that it better suited the character of his verse. 

It was the publication of this volume that caused 
the furore in England that has already been de- 
scribed. This was really one of the great literary 



306 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

successes of our generation, so far as immediate and 
wide popularity and social honors measure success. 
To be sure, it was founded on British insularity and 
British ignorance. The English critic, and to 

Ignorance. gome degree the English public also, is 
always on the watch for something original in Ameri- 
can literature, something distinctively national, some- 
thing racy of the soil. He has an ingrained conviction 
that our literature is, for the most part, a weak echo 
of his country's, and that few of our authors are truly 
American. But he fails to distinguish between what 
is original and what is merely bizarre, and individual 
affectation frequently imposes itself on him as the 
true flavor of American life. 

The British admiration of Joaquin Miller was, there- 
fore, based on an entirely erroneous idea of the 
literary significance of his writings. Except in his 
themes, few of our American poets have been less 
The"Ameri- American. His stories, — for most of his 
can Byron." poems arc rhymed and versified tales of 
adventure, — as to their details, have the true wild 
Western savor, but in all other respects his work is 
purely British. It has already been intimated that 
the British critic did well to describe him as " The 
American Byron." That form of description, as has 
been remarked heretofore, is generally an insult that 
vainly tries to disguise itself as a compliment. In 
this case the phrase escapes being insulting by being 
accurately descriptive. Joaquin Miller is the Ameri- 
can Byron — just that, and only that — in his " Songs 



JOAQUIN MILLER. 'ip'J 

of the Sierras." His heroes are Byron's characters 
masquerading in California costumes; Walker is a 
Lara in sombrero and serape, and Kit Carson is 
Don Juan in the garb of scout and Indian fighter. 
Byron's influence can be traced in every poem and 
almost in every line. One is not, perhaps, justified in 
saying that Joaquin Miller would never have written 
these songs if he had not soaked his mind in Byron, 
but he would certainly have written them far differ- 
ently in that case. 

III. 

One thing should have saved the British critic from 
this mistake of his, — the lack of artistic merit in this 
first book of Mr. Miller's. Whatever merits it may 
be allowed to contain, the merit of good workmanship 
is certainly absent. The instructed reader should 
have perceived at once that if here was a poet born, 
here was not a poet made. The critic might have 
perceived also, what is certainly there, — evidence 
that this was a poet who had an innate faculty of ex- 
pression, that might be improved by practice and 
polished by the learning and following of rules, but 
not without attractiveness in its natural wildness. 

What is bad in this book is bad without disguise, 
so fatuously bad that one never ceases wondering how 
an author capable of such stuff could ever „ ^ 

J^ Extremes meet. 

do anything good. Yet the good, in turn, 

is so strong and so beautiful as to make the reader 



308 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

temporarily insensible to irregularities and inequalities 
of style, as well as to gross defects of taste. That this 
is no exaggeration let the following lines testify : — 

" I lay in my hammock : the air was heavy 
And hot and threatening ; the very heaven 
Was holding its breath ; the bees in a bevy 
Hid under my thatch ; and birds were driven 
In clouds to the rocks in g, hurried whirr 
As I peer'd down by the path for her. 
She stood like a bronze bent over the river, 
The proud eyes fix'd, the passion unspoken — 
When the heavens broke like a great dyke broken. 
Then, ere I fairly had time to give her 
A shout of warning, a rushing of wind 
And the rolling of clouds and a deafening din 
And a darkness that had been black to the blind 
Came down, as I shouted, ' Come in ! come in ! 
Come under the roof, come up from the river. 
As up from a grave — come now, or come never ! ' 
The tassel'd tops of the pines were as weeds, 
The red-woods rock'd like to lake-side reeds. 
And the world seem'd darken'd and drown'd for ever." 

That is almost incomparably good, — not quite per- 
fect in workmanship, but so full of passion and fire as 
to atone for any defects in form. When one reads 
that, and some other things in this volume, one can 
almost pardon the British critic who wrote, fresh from 
the reading of it: " Of all American poetry in recent 
years, that of Mr. Joaquin Miller is the freshest. He 
A British is a new poet in the proper sense of the 

criticism. term. He owes allegiance to no transat- 

lantic masters, and he is no servile imitator of the 
modern minstrelsy of our own country. In outward 



JOAQUIN MILLER. 309 

form — in the mechanism of his poetry — he of course 
follows the fashion of the times ; but the spirit is new, 
the tone is individual and distinct. In his poems for 
the first time the prairies, the Sierras, and the new 
and old life of the Far West of America, have been 
fairly poetized, so to speak." One can almost pardon 
this, but not quite ; for it is the duty of the critic not 
to let himself be carried off his feet by his emotions, 
and to maintain his coolness of judgment when his 
admiration is most stirred. The trouble with this 
critic was that he admired not wisely but too well, 
and that, approaching his author with a preconceived 
theory of American poetry, he misjudged the facts 
before him. So absurd, however, did the whole tribe 
of British critics become, that on the publication of 
Mr. Miller's second volume, "Songs of the Sun- 
Lands," we find the " Westminster Review " soberly 
exhorting the poet after this fashion : " Mr. Miller 
must be careful that he does not buy ele- More of the 
gance at too dear a price. We ourselves ®^"^=°'^- 
prefer the roughness of the backwoods of America to 
all the drawing-room conventionalities of Europe. 
We prefer Mr. Joaquin Miller's native reed-pipe to 
any guitar." Now it is about an even chance whether 
Mr. Miller's " native reed-pipe " (a pretty phrase, is 
it not?) sends forth music or discord, and this exhor- 
tation not to be too fine, not to condescend too much 
to the polish of civilization, was, had the critic but 
known it, the worst advice he could have given to the 
poet, — not to mention that it was wholly wasted, for 



3IO AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY. 

Joaquin Miller's besetting sin has never been too 
much regard for the conventional. 

In truth, this second volume showed a marked ad- 
vance in the poetic art. It showed that the poet was 
gradually acquiring some knowledge of versification, 
though it also warranted a prediction that he would 
never become complete master of conventional forms 
of expression. There is, and to the last there will be 
something untamed and untutored about his verse ; it 
is as lawless as the outlaws whom it so often celebrates, 
but, like them, often unexpectedly reveals elemental 
traits of strength and beauty. And yet this general 
characterization of his work is hardly fair ; sweeping 
statements are seldom quite fair, until they are so 
qualified with exceptions that the original 

Choice bits. . 11. m 1 tt 1 

text IS scarcely discernible. Here and 
there one finds, even in his first volume, a choice bit 
that could hardly be made more perfect by the most 
pains^-aking workmanship. Here is an instance : — 

" Life knows no dead so beautiful 
As is the white cold coffin'd past ; 
This I may love nor be betray'd : 
The dead are faithful to the last. 
I am not spouseless — I have wed 
A memory — a life that 's dead." 

One can hardly say that in his later volumes these 
bits occur more frequently, but they do occur, — wit- 
ness these stanzas, prefixed to " The Rhyme of the 
Great River," in " Songs of the Mexican Seas " 
(1887):- 



yOA Q UIN MILLER. 3 1 1 

" Rhyme on, rhyme on in reedy flow, 
O river, rhymer ever sweet ! 
The story of thy land is meet, 
The stars stand listening to know. 

" Rhyme on, O river of the earth ! 
Gray father of the dreadful seas. 
Rhyme on ! the world upon its knees 
Shall yet invoke thy wealth and worth. 

" Rhyme on, the reed is at thy mouth, 

kingly minstrel, mighty stream ! 
Thy Crescent City, like a dream, 

Hangs in the heaven of my South. 

" Rhyme on, rhyme on ! these broken strings 
Sing sweetest in this warm south wind ; 

1 sit thy willow banks and bind 
A broken harp that fitful sings." 

As may be inferred from even the brief extracts 
given above, Mr. Miller is at his best in his lyrics. 
His longer narrative poems are weak and confused in 
structure, though they often contain some of his 
strongest passages. His blank, unrhymed verse, the 
severest test of a poet, could not well be of poorer 
quality ; it is verbose, spasmodic, bombastic. Quali- 
fication must again be made to these Theisiesof 
general statements. One of his longer 
poems, in his " Songs of the Sun-Lands," "The Isles 
of the Amazons," must be rated as, on the whole, the 
finest specimen of his work. Into it he has put all his 
strength, and, as he seems temporarily to have for- 
gotten his affectations and mannerisms, his lines glow 



312 AMERICAN WRITERS OF TO-DAY 

with tropical passion, and thrill the reader with the 
vividness and originality of their imagery and their 
spontaneous vigor of expression. The lack of propor- 
tion, the sins against good taste, the rawness and 
crudeness of sentiment that so repel the reader in 
some of his work, are inconspicuous here. Extracts 
would do no justice to this noble poem, which must 
be read and admired as a whole. 

In the dedication of one of his latest volumes, Mr. 
Miller asks, somewhat plaintively : " And may I not 
ask in return, now at the last, when the shadows begin 
to grow long, something of that consideration which, 
thus far, has been accorded almost entirely by 
strangers?" If by " consideration" the poet means 
that fulsome and foolish praise that the English 
chorussed twenty years ago, his hope is vain. He 
Lacks critical P^obably took it seriously when the sapient 
faculty. London critics assured him that he was a 

greater, because a more original, poet than Lowell or 
Bryant. We may safely infer from his writings that 
he has httle faculty of self-criticism, — that all his 
work appears to him of nearly equal worth, and that 
he is unconscious of his many and flagrant faults. 
This alone can account for his lawless trampling on 
the conventionalities of the poet's art. The fame that 
he would claim as his right will never be awarded him 
by the readers of the present day, whatever the readers 
of the future may say. But Mr. Miller has, neverthe- 
less, just cause of complaint against his countrymen. 



JOAQUIN MILLER. 313 

There has been a natural resentment of the unwise 
puffery of the London press, and in consequence the 
poet has never received his true meed of praise. 
Certain personal eccentricities have also stood between 
him and a just appreciation of his work. There is so 
much that is finely imaginative in his verse, so much 
that is genuine in feeling and powerful in expression, 
that, in spite of his maddening shortcomings, the 
perverse wilfulness of his errors, he deserves and 
should before this have been awarded by general 
suffrage, an honored place well up on the roll of 
American poets. 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



Academy, French, awards prize to 
Crawford, 156. 

Addison, papers on Milton, 63 ; humor 
of, 92; essays, 95. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, collabo- 
rates with Stedman, 16 ; birth and 
childhood, 104 ; " Story of a Bad 
Boy," ib. ; education cut short, 105 ; 
business career, 106 ; " Ballad of 
Baby Bell," ib. ; devotes himself to 
literature, 107 ; on staff of " Home 
Journal," 108; friendships, ib., 277 ; 
editor of "Every Saturday," 109; 
"The Dells," no; editor of "The 
Atlantic," no ; discovery of authors, 
hi; other books, 112; style, ib. ; 
longer stories, 113 ; treatment of the 
labor question, 114; verse, a carver 
of cameos, 115; conscientious art, 
116; longer poems, 118; dash of 
cynicism, ib. ; " Mercedes," 119, 120 ; 
European reputation, 121; reserved 
power, 122 ; jokes about Craddock's 
chirography, 172; humor, 232. 

Americ-an, false standards of, 138 ; 
James hardly an, 75, 86; British 
ignorance of things, 121; queer 
British ideas about, 136, 138, 159, 
229 ; Miss Murfree distinctively, 
186; Cable, 266; Harte, 229; 
Miller, how far, 309. 

" Argonauts of '49," 215 ; Harte's lec- 
ture on, 223. 



Arnold, Benedict, 262. 

Arnold, Matthew, sweet reasonable- 
ness, 66 ; style, 85. 

Art, baseness in, satiates, 23 ; neces- 
sarily selective, 52 ; chief function 
to please, 53 ; no place for vile or 
trivial in, ib. ; grotesque in, 53, 298 ; 
Mr. James's mechanical, 79; must 
exclude nothing, 81 ; morals in, 82; 
Cable's, 267 ; of story telling in verse, 
284 ; Stoddard's devotion to, 287 ; 
which conceals art, 294 ; Joaqum 
Miller's lack of, 307. 

"Atlantic Monthly," Howells editor 
of, 49; Aldrich editor of, 113; Crad- 
dock's first story in, 171. 

Autobiography, Howells's, 41;; War- 
ner's, 88; Aldrich's, 104; Mrs. 
Burnett's, 159; Hale's, 232. 

Authors, the University of, 43 ; must 
live, 78; rewards of, 169 ; versatility 
of American, 230. 



Bacon, an essayist, 95. 
Balzac, "Comedie Humaine," 81. 
Bancroft, labored history, 27. 
Beaconsfield, Lord (Disraeli), defini- 
tion of a critic, 64 ; " Lothair," 

153- 
Beauty, relation to truth, 21. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 233. 
Bellamy, Edward, 240. 



3i8 



INDEX. 



Billings, Josh, see Shaw. 

Blackmore, rhythmical prose, 20, 21. 

Blavatsky, Madame, 143. 

Blindness, Prescott's, 32 ; Parkman's 
partial, ib. ; Milton's, 34. 

Boston, Hale born in, 231; Henry 
James the idol of, 69. 

Boswell, 141. 

Boy, Mark Twain's knowledge of, 
135 ; Fauntleroy too perfect a, 166, 

Brooks, Phillips, 233. 

Brown, John, Stedman's ballad on, 9. 

Browning, dramatic effects, how pro- 
duced, 24; "Pippa," 246. 

Bryant, British neglect of, 138. 

Bunyan, prefers second part of " Pil- 
grim's Progress," 225. 

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 
Enghsh born, 159; precocity, ib. ; 
autobiography, ib. ; discovered by 
" Scribner's," 160; marries Dr. 
Burnett, 161 ; " That Lass o' 
Lowrie's," ib. ; later novels, 162 ; 
realist by instinct, ib. ; gift of 
style, 163, 196; " Little Lord 
Fauntleroy," 164-166; its fatal 
defect, 165; other books for the 
young, 167 ; dramatic success, i68 ; 
its rewards, 169; ignoring of Ten- 
nessee, 170. 

Burton, his " Anatomy " quoted, 69. 

Byron, lines on critics, 64 ; and Bret 
Harte, 134; on Cervantes, 130; 
sudden fame, 1S7; "The Ameri- 
can," 301. 

Cable, George Washington, rep- 
resentative Southern writer, 261 ; 
political heresies, 262 ; birth, ib. ; 
youth, 263 ; serves in Confederate 
army, ib. ; journalism, 264 ; first 
stories, ib. ; devotes himself to liter- 
ature, 266 ; Creole life in fiction, 
264, 266; pioneer in dialect writing, 
266 ; a great artist, 267 ; style, ib. ; 
first novels, 268 ; later writings, 
269 ; rare combination of endow- 
ments, 270 ; unpopularity in the 



South, 271 ; courage, 272 ; Northern 
residence, 125, 272, 273 ; books, 
274. 

California, Mark Twain's life in, 128 , 
romantic history, 212; Argonauts, 
213 ; Harte's picture of life in, 217- 
221; dislike of Harte in, 229; how 
named, zyj. 

Calvin, invalidism, 284 ; industry, ib. 

Carlyle, prose. 20 ; corruscations of, 
85 ; hatred of shams, 132. 

" Century," publishes Eggleston's 
novels, 254; "Life in the Thirteen 
Colonies," 259. 

Cervantes, 130. 

Channmg, 27. 

Charm, necessary in poetry, 21 ; Mrs. 
Burnett's, 163, 196. 

Chautauqua, Hale's connection with, 
242. 

Cicero, 248. 

Collins, Wilkie, short stories, 77 ; 
plots, 295 ; style, 163. 

Cosmopolitan, Howells's spirit, 48 ; 
Henry James's American, 71-75. 

Craddock, Charles Egbert, 
(Mary Noailles Murfree), dis- 
covered by Aldrich, iii ; first 
story, 171 ; " In the Tennessee 
Mountains," ib. ; mystery of the 
authorship, 172; disclosed, 173; 
lineage, 175; home at St. Louis, 
ib. ; conscientious worker, 176; 
thorough knowledge, 177; depth 
of insight, ib. ; short stories, 178; 
"Where the Battle was Fought," 
179; other books, iSo; plot, 182; 
dialogue, ib. ; description, 183, 184 ; 
style, 185 ; distinctively American, 
186. 

Crawford, Thomas, 142. 

Crawford, Francis Marion, 
knowledge of Italy, 71; birth, 141; 
not a mere dreamer, 142 ; enters 
Harvard, ib. ; romantic career, 143 ; 
journalist, ib.; "Mr. Isaacs," 143, 
144 ; astonishingly prolific, 145 ; 
neither realist nor romancer, 76, 



INDEX. 



319 



146; theory of fiction, 147, 154; 
his romances, 148 ; his novels, 149 ; 
two failures, 1 50; the Saracinesca trio, 
1 51-153; European reputation, 155 ; 
prize from French Academy, 156; 
his future, ib. 

Creole in fiction, 264, 266, 26S, 269. 

Critic, Howells's quaiTel with, 61 ; a 
parasite, 62 ; rather a middleman, 
ib. ; his right to exist, 63 ; not so 
black as painted, 64 ; his true func- 
tion, 65 ; Disraeli's definition of, 64 ; 
Byron's lines on, ib. 

Criticism, an unprofitable sort of, 
158; Joaquin Miller lacks self-, 
312. 

Curtis, George William, his "Easy 
Chair," 90. 

Cuttle, Captain, his famous observa- 
tion, 52. 

Cynicism, vein of in Stedman, 13 ; 
incompatible with poetry, 25 ; Aid- 
rich's dash of, 118. 



Daudet, Alphonse, his " Le Petit 
Chose," 45. 

Davis, Richard Harding, his Van 
Bibber, 56, note. 

Decameron, 76. 

Defoe, verisimilitude, 244, 297. 

De Quincy, prose, 20; essays, 95. 

Description, Miss Murfree's, 1S3. 

Dialect, Miss Murfree's, 1S5; Mrs. 
Whitney's New England, 208 ; Ca- 
ble's, 266; " craze," ib. ; Stockton's, 
296. 

Dialogue, place in art of fiction, 181 ; 
Miss Murfree's, 182. 

Dickens, rythmical prose, 20 ; " Christ- 
mas Stories," "j"] ; and the romantic 
school, 100 ; Pickwick, 91 ; defi- 
cient in style, 163 ; sentimentality, 
228 ; suspects George Eliot's dis- 
guise, 174; Stoddard's " Gadshill," 
285. 

Didacticism, excluded from poetry, 
22 ; from fiction, 82 ; avoided by 



Miss Phelps, 194 ; Hale teaches 

without, 245. See Ethics. 
Dodge, Miss ("Gail Hamilton"), on 

woman question, 196. 
Drama, purpose of, 68 ; Henry James's 

successes, S3-S5 ; Mrs. Burnett's 

contribution to, 16S-1 70. 
Dumas, Alexandre plre, a romancer, 

100. 



Eggleston, Edward, youth, 249; 
a circuit rider, ib. ; journalist, 251 ; 
editor of the " Independent," ib. ; 
pastor, 252; home, ib. ; "The 
Hoosier Schoolmaster," 253; other 
books, 254 ; man greater than artist, 
255; historian, 256; diligence in 
research, 257; biographies, 258; 
historian of the people, 259. 

Eggleston, George Cary, " American 
War Ballads and Lyrics," 14. 

Eliot, George, and romantic school, 
100; surpassed by Miss Murfree, 
I •]■}) ; suspicions of Dickens and 
others concerning, 174. 

Essays, James's critical, 80 ; popular- 
ity of, 95 ; famous writers of, ib. ; 
Warner's natural method of ex- 
pression, 96. 

Ethics, not excluded from poetry, 
22 ; in art, 195 ; Mrs. Whitney's 
"preachy" tone, 209; Hale always 
a preacher, 245. See Didacticism 
and Morals. 



Fashion, mutations of literary, 185. 

Fecundity, literarj^, Parkman's, 30 ; 
Howells's, 50; Crawford's, 145; 
Miss Murfree's, 180; Mrs. Whit- 
ney's, 201; Hale's, 244; Calvin's, 
248. See Industry. 

Fiction, Howells's theory of, 67 ; 
Crawford's 147, 154; Warner's lack 
of art in, loi ; romantic school of, 
100; indecency of French, 154; its 
quasi-justification, 155 ; no excuse 



320 



INDEX. 



for indecency in American, ib. ; 

children good judges of, 298 ; 

Creole life in, 264, 266 ; artistic and 

moral wedded in Cable's, 270. 
France, James's knowledge of, 71. 
Froude, a melancholy example, 35 ; on 

literary wages, 275. - 

Genius, intuitions of, 20; Parkman a 

man of, 30 ; not necessarily a fool, 
138 ; Trollope's theory of, 146. 

Gentlemen, English and French, 71, 
72 ; American, 75. 

George, Henry, 240. 

Gibbon, rank as historian, 27; his 
great work, 30 ; nobody to retell his 
story, 35 ; militia service, 37. 

Gladstone, a chopper of trees, 39. 

Globe-trotter, American, 130. 

" Godey's," part in literature, 107. 

Greeley, Horace, 240. 

Grotesque, its place in art, 53, 298. 

Guiney, Louise Imogen, iii. 

Haggard, Rider, romances, 80, 100. 

Hale, Nathan and Lucretia P., 231. 

Hale, Edward Everett, versa- 
tility, 230; ancestry, 231 ; education, 
232 ; preacher, ib., 245 ; pastor, 234; 
his Philip Nolan, 234; verisimili- 
tude, 235, 297; novels, 236; histo- 
rian, 237 ; superficiality, 238 ; editor, 
239 ; philanthropist, 240 ; Chautau- 
qua work, 242 ; power, 244 ; volum- 
inousness, 244 ; optimism, 246 ; 
contrasted with Tolstoi, 247. 

Hamilton College, Warner graduated 
at, 89. 

Hamilton, "Single-speech," 167. 

Hamilton, Gail, see Dodge. 

Hardy, Arthur Sherburne, 1 1 1 . 

"Harper's Magazine," Howells's con- 
tributions to, 61 ; Warner's connec- 
tion with, 90. 

Harte, Francis Bret, British ad- 
miration of, 138 ; birth and boy- 
hood, 214 ; fails in mining, 215, 



303; first attempt at writing, 215 ; 
compositor, 216; journalist, 217; 
" Condensed Novels," ib , 153 ; 
poems, 218 ; unpopularity in Cali- 
fornia, 219 ; editor of " The Over- 
land Monthly," 219; "The Luck 
of Roaring Camp," 220; other tales 
of California life, 134, 221, 268 ; 
leaves California, 222 ; Bohemian- 
ism, 223 ; goes abroad, ib. ; naiTow- 
ness, 224 ; alleged immorality, 226 ; 
sentimentality, 228 ; popularity 
abroad, 229. 

Hartford, famous authors of, 124. 

Harvard, Parkman graduated at, 36, 
and professor in, 39 : James law 
student at, 70 ; Aldrich fails to 
enter, 105 ; Crawford student at, 
142 ; Hale graduated at, 232 ; Stod- 
dard's poem at, 285. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Stedman's 
poem on, 15 ; " Twice Told Tales," 
'J'] ; James's biography of, 80 ; typi- 
cal romancer, 148 ; psychologic 
rather than moral, 270; kindness to 
Stoddard, 280 ; narrowness, 225. 

Heptameron, 76. 

Historian, the great, 27; Parkman as, 
31-37 ; Hale a superficial, 238 ; 
Eggleston as, 256-260. 

Hobbes, 184. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, effervescing 
wit, 26 ; one of the Brahmin caste, 
27 ; and Howells, 47 ; humorist, 
93; "Elsie Venner," 102; British 
neglect of, 138; versatility, 230; 
occasional poems, 286. 

Homer, art of, 116. 

Horticulture, Parkman's labors in, 39. 
.HowfELLS, William Dean, natu- 
L^ rally a prose writer, 25 ; not college 
bred, 43"^- descent, 44 ; "A Boy's 
Town," 45 ; journalist, 46; " Poems 
of Two Friends," ib. ; biography of 
Lincoln, 47 ; consul at Venice, ib. ; 
trip to Boston, ib. ; books of travel, 
48 ; editor of " Atlantic," 49 ; fe- 
cundity, 50 ; alleged pessimism, ib. ; 



INDEX. 



321 



admiration of Tolstoi", 51 ; artist, ib.; 
realism, 52 ; gospel of the trivial, 
54; farce-comedies, 55; travesty of 
American womanhood, 56 ; defence, 
57 ; not a valid plea, 58 ; " World of 
Chance," 59; Peace Hughes, 60; 
critical writings, 61 ; theory of criti- 
cism, 62-66 ; faithful to his ideals, 
67 ; knowledge of Europe, 70 ; keen 
observation, 232. 

Hughes, Peace, Howells's finest female 
character, 59, 60. 

Humor, American, 55, 136, 288 ; 
Howells's, 55 ; Warner's, 92 ; 
dangerous to an author, 93, 94; 
exaggeration an element of, ib. ; 
cheap, 137 ; Mark Twain's, ib., 
288; electricity of literature, 137; 
Lowell's urbane, 289 ; Mrs. Whit- 
ney's quiet, 20S; Aldrich's, 232; 
test of, 290 ; foreign critics of, 288 ; 
Stockton's, 290, 295 ; essence of, 
296, 

Hutchinson, Ellen M., " Library of 
American Literature," 18. 



Idaho, 303. 

" Independent," Miss Phelps writes 

for, 195 ; Eggleston editor of, 251. 
Industry, Parkman's, 32 ; Howells's, 

61 ; Miss Phelps's, 198; Eggleston's, 

257. See Fecundity. 
Irving, rank as historian, 27 ; short 

stories, 77 ; humor, 92 ; Warner's 

study of, 96. 
Isocrates, advice to Demonicus, 69. 
Italy, Crawford's knowledge of, 71. 



James, Henry (senior), extraordinary 
career, 70. 

James, Henry (junior). Bayard 
Taylor's high praise of, 69 ; birth 
and education, 70 ; studies law at 
Harvard, ib. ; knowledge of Europe, 
ib. ; ignorance of America, 71 ; In- 
ternational Novels, ib.; " The 



American," 72; "Daisy Miller," 
73 ; half truths, ib. ; his missing 
type, 74-76; theory of the novel, 
76; short stories, 77-79; art me- 
chanical, 79 ; disciple of Balzac, 80 ; 
critical essays, ib. ; theory of art, 81, 
82 ; lacks courage of his theories, 
82 ; plays, 83-85 ; style, 85, 113. 

Janvier, Thomas A., 56. 

Jewett, Sarah Orne, in. 

Johnson, Samuel, essays, 95 ; parody,. 
141 ; foolish saying, 176. 

Journalism, demands of, 6; Warner's, 
89; Mark Twain's, 127, 128; Craw- 
ford's, 143 ; Harte's, 217, 219 ; 
Horace Greeley school of, 240 ; 
Eggleston's, 251 ; Cable's, 264 ; 
Stockton's, 289; Miller's, 303. 

Keats, prose version of, 21 ; Aldrich 
imbibes his spirit, 118; Stoddard's 
affinity with, 282. 

Kipling, Rudyard, 80, 144. 

" Knickerbocker's," Parkman's articles 
in, 28 ; and American literature, 107. 

Labor Question, Aldrich's treatment 

of, 114. 
Lamb, Charles, humor of, 92 ; essays, 

95- 

Landor, prose, 20. 

Lang, Andrew, insularity, 122. 

Lincoln, Abraham, Howells's biogra- 
phy of, 47; a Hoosier boy, 249; 
Stoddard's ode on, 285. 

Literature, crude workmanship of, 
116; mutations of fashion in, 185 ; 
collaboration in, 197; Scott's dictum 
regarding, 275 ; curiosities of, 279 ; 
puzzles of, 2 86 ; fame in, 291. 

Lowell, James Russell, critic, 17 ; 
luxuriant style, 26 ; Brahmin caste, 
27 ; Howells makes acquaintance of, 
47 ; British neglect for a time, 138 ; 
" Hosea Biglow," 209 ; versatility, 
230 ; urbane humor, 289 ; " Com- 
memoration Ode," 14, 285. 



322 



INDEX. 



Macaulay, opinion of prize poems, S ; 
rank as historian, 27 ; his history, 
30 ; robustness, 33 ; almost a novel- 
ist, 41 ; essays, 95 ; glitter and glow 
of, 85. 

Malory, " Morte d' Arthur," 132, 133. 

Massachusetts, plain living and high 
thinking in, 87. 

Matthews, Brander, strictures on Brit- 
ish insularity, 121, 122. 

" Mercedes," plot of Aldrich's drama, 
119-121. 

Michael Angelo, 157. 

Miller, Joaquin (Cincinnatus 
Hiner), 301 ; his vogue in England, 
ib. ; sudden fame, 302 ; complete 
oblivion, ib.,; birth and education, 
ib. ; journalistic experience, 303 ; 
practices law, ib. ; first writings, 
304; visit to England, 305 ; "Songs 
of the Sierras," ib. ; British admira- 
tion of, 138, 301, 306; lack of art, 
307 ; second volume of verse, 310 ; 
lacks critical faculty, 312. 

Miller; Daisy, story, 'j-:, ; drama, 84. 

Milton, " Mute inglorious," 4, 265 ; 
prose, 20; on poetic expression, 
24; blindness and "Paradise Lost," 
34 ; Addison's paper on, 63 ; his 
spirit in Aldrich, 118; prefers his 
"Paradise Regained," 225. 

Mining, Mark Twain's experience in, 
127; Bret Harte's, 215, 303. 

Mississippi, Mark Twain a pilot on, 
127; his knowledge of the region, 

134- 
Moliere, 134. 
" Moral," of the " Blameless Prince," 

13- 

Morals in Art, 22, 53, 82, 226, 228. 
See Ethics and Didacticism. 

Motley, John Lothrop, rank as histo- 
rian, 27. 

Murfree, Mary Noailles, see Crad- 
dock. 

Murray, " Adirondack," 233. 

Musset, Alfredde, James's essay on, So. 

Mysticism, Mrs. VVhitney's, 210. 



"Nation," the, Howells a writer for, 
48. 

New England, Miss Phelps's knowl- 
edge of, 193 ; Mrs. Whitney's, 208 ; 
village life, 297. 

New York, little impression on Aid- 
rich, 109 ; Crawford's ignorance of, 
150. 

Nolan, Philip, not a real person, 

234- 

Novelist, Parkman nearly one, 40 ; 
versus historian, 41 ; Macaulay 
shows gifts of, 41 ; Scott as, ib. 

Novel, Howells's theory of, 52 ; 
James's theory of, 76, 81 ; James's 
International, 71 ; the typical 
French, 83; Stockton's failures in 
writing, 295 ; Mrs. Stoddard's meri- 
torious, 279 ; every woman can 
write one, 99; defined, 147; the 
ideal, 153; the makings of a, 182; 
constructive power necessary to 
writing, 268. 

Ohio, usurps Virginia's function, 87. 
Optimism, Hale's, 246. 
Originality, Parkman's, 32 ; Warner's, 
97 ; Stockton's, 294. 

Parkman, Francis, rank among 
historians, 27 ; his family, 28 ; grad- 
uated at Harvard, ib. ; studies law, 
ib. ; in the Great West, ib. ; " The 
California and Oregon Trail," 29 ; 
his histories, ib. ; a " self-made man," 
30 ; abundant labors, 31, 248 ; origi- 
nality, 32 ; researches, 33 ; almost 
blind, ib. ; style, 35 ; a reahst, 36 ; 
picturesqueness, ib. ; praised by 
" Saturday Review," ib. ; recognition 
abroad, 37 ; a man of the world, ib. ; 
his play, 38 ; horticultural pursuits, 
39 ; " Book of Roses," 40 ; pro- 
fessor of horticulture, ib. ; " Vassall 
Morton," ib. ; death, 42. 

Palmerston, a rider to hounds, 39. 

Pater, 270. 



INDEX. 



323 



Pessimism, Howells's alleged, 50 ; 
incompatible with poetry, 25. 

Phelps, Austin, 188. 

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, sud- 
den fame, 187 ; a born author, 188 ; 
parentage, ib. ; short tales, 193 ; 
message, 194; philanthropy, 195; 
style, ib. ; marries Mr. Ward, 197 ; 
industry, 198 ; " Swedenborgianism," 
191 ; knowledge of human nature, 
193 ; verse, 199. 

Philanthropist, Dr. Hale a, 240-243 ; 
Eggleston, 255. 

PhiHp of Spain, 287. 

Philistine, Mark Twain too frank a, 

131- 

Piatt, John J., literary partnership 
with Howells, 46. 

Picturesqueness, Parkman's, 36 ; era 
of in California, 213. 

Play, its value, 38 ; Parkman's, 39 ; 
Gladstone's, ib. ; Palmerston's, ib. 

Plots, place of in novel, 52; Miss 
Murfree's, 182 ; Miss Phelps's, 193. 

Poe, short stories, •]'] ; narrowness, 
225. 

Poet, a prophet, 24; Howells a pre- 
cocious, 45 ; America's lack of great, 
3; scant rewards of, 4, 2S0. 

Poetry, Macaulay's opinion of prize, 
8 ; Stedman's lectures on, 19 ; de- 
fined, ib. ; differentiated from prose, 
20 ; how it becomes effective, 21 ; 
beauty its chief element, 20 ; in- 
cludes ethics, 22 ; has a religious 
basis, 23 ; quality of its expression, 
24 ; pessimism incompatible with, 
25 ; Aldrich's cameo-like verse, 115 ; 
unprofitable merchandise, 117; 
Miss Phelps's, 199 ; Mrs. Whit- 
ney's, 203-205 ; characteristics of 
Stoddard's, 2S2, 283 ; British criti- 
cism of American, 308 ; art of, 310. 

Pope, " Essay on Man," 22. 

Poverty, bracing qualities of, 30. 

Precocity, Howells's, 45 ; Mrs. Bur- 
nett's, 159 ; Bret Harte's, 215. 

Prescott, rank as historian, 27; blind- 



ness, 33 ; " Conquest of Mexico," 
ib. 

Prose, how differing from poetry, 20, 
21 ; Landor's, 20 ; Milton's, ib. ; De 
Quincey's, ib. ; Carlyle's, ib. ; Dick- 
ens's and Blackmore's rhythmical, 
ib. 

" Putnam's " and American authors, 
107. 



Raleigh, Sir Walter, 237. 

Reade, Charles, short stories, 77 ; 

style, 163. 
Realism, Parkman's, 36; its canon, 

52 ; true and false, 53 ; Howells's, 

52 ; James's, 80 ; Mark Twain's 

unconscious, 134; Mrs. Burnett's 

instinctive, 162. 
Realist, Parkman a historical, 36 ; 

Warner no, 100 ; Crawford not a, 

146. 
Rhythm, relation to poetry, 19, 20; 

prose, 21. 
Romance, defined, 147 ; schools in 

fiction, 100 ; Hawthorne's typical, 

148. 
Rousseau, 240. 



St. Botolph's Club, Parkman presi- 
dent of, 38. 

Sainte-Beuve, James a disciple of, 80. 

"St. Nicholas," 166, 251, 290. 

Sappho, lyrics, 116. 

"Saturday Review," praises Park- 
man, 36. 

Saxe, John G., a humorist, 93. 

Scott, Sir Walter, romances in verse, 
II ; his novels and their value, 41 ; 
unable to write short stories, 'j'] ; 
a romancer, 100 ; lies about Wav- 
erley, 1 74 ; gift as story teller, 207 ; 
dictum on literature, 275. 

" Scribner's Magazine," 159, 160, 264, 
26S, 290. 

Seneca, 276. 

Sentiment, Harte's not true, 228 ; 



324 



INDEX. 



Dickens's becomes sentimentality 
ib. 

Shaw, Henry W. ("Josh Billings"), 
as a humorist, 94. 

Shelley, reminiscences of in Stedman's 
poetry, 9; influence on Stoddard, 
283 ; fame inferior to Southey's, 
286. 

Short story, famous authors and the, 
'J'] ; requirements of, 78; excellence 
of Henry James's, 79 ; Mark 
Twain's, 135 ; Miss Murfree's, 
178 ; Miss Phelps's, 193 ; how it 
differs from the novel, 236 ; Bret 
Harte's, 268 ; Stockton's, 292. 

Slavery, 262, 270, 271. 

Smith, Sydney, too funny by far, 94. 

Smollett, and Bret Harte, 134. 

South, the, 99, 261, 263, 270, 271, 272, 

273- 

Southey, 286. 

Spoils system, fruits of, 48. 

Stage, not so bad as represented, 
169. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 
mother, 5 ; early aptitude for litera- 
ture, ib. ; suspended from college, 
ib. ; tries journalism, 6 ; becomes 
stock-broker, ib. ; good fortune, 7 ; 
unconscious imitation, 8 ; John 
Brown ballad, 9; "Alice of Mon- 
mouth," 11; "Cavalry Song," not 
an independent lyric, 12 ; " The 
Blameless Prince," 13; "Haw- 
thorne and other Poems," 15 ; care- 
ful workmanship, ib. ; equipment as 
a critic, 17; limitations, 18; "Li- 
brary of American Literature," ib. ; 
" Nature and Elements of Poetry," 
19 ; arrested development of, 25 ; 
artist in verse, not in prose, ib. ; 
place in American literature, 26 ; 
Aldrich's friendship with, 108 ; 
Stoddard's, 277. 

Steele, Sir Richard, humor of, 92. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, his novels, 
100. 

Stockton, Francis Richard, 288; 



birth, 289 education, ib. ; journa- 
lism, ib. ; assistant editor of " St. 
Nicholas," 290 ; " Rudder Grange," 
ib. ; writer of short stories, 292 ; 
" Lady and Tiger," 112, 291 ; rank 
among American story writers, ib. ; 
method, vindicated by success, 292, 
293; style, 112, 294 ; originality, ib. ; 
novels failures, 295 ; humor, ib. ; 
local color and dialect, ib. ; novel- 
ettes, 297 ; favorite with children, 
298 ; no signs of exhaustion, 299. 

Stoddard, Elizabeth Barstow, 279 ; 
marriage, ib. ; literary work, ib. 

Stoddard, Richard Henry, 275 ; 
birth and early years, 276 ; educa- 
tion, ib. ; slight encouragement, 277; 
friendship with Aldrich, 108 ; with 
Taylor, 278 ; " Footprints," ib. ; 
marriage, 279 ; first success in lit- 
erature, 280 ; second volume of 
verse, ib. ; clerkship in Custom 
House, ib. ; hack work, ib. ; prose, 
281 ; verse, 2S2 ; characteristics, ib. ; 
prodigal fancy, 2S3 ; taste, ib. ; later 
poems, 284, 285 ; popular ignorance 
of his poetry, 286 ; devotion to art, 
287. 

Story-telling, Scott's gift of, 207 ; 
Mrs. Whitney's, 207 ; Hale's, 235. 

Stowe, Mrs. Harriett Beecher, 124, 
125. 

Stuart, Elizabeth, 1S8 ; Moses, ib. 

Style, Stedman's prose, 25 ; Lowell's 
luxuriant, 26 ; Parkman's, 35 ; 
Henry James's, 85 ; Macaulay's, 
ib. ; Warner's, 96; Aldrich's, 112; 
Charles Reade's, 163 ; Mrs. Bur- 
nett's, ib., 196; Miss Murfree's, 
185 ; Miss Phelps's, 195 ; Mrs. 
Whitney's, 208 ; Cable's, 267 ; 
Stockton's, 294 ; Hale's verisimili- 
tude, 244. See Workmanship. 

Swedenborg, the elder Howells a 
follower of, 44 ; alleged influence 
on Miss Phelps, 191 ; influence on 
Mrs. Whitney, 210. 

Swift, his perilous repute as a wit, 94. 



INDEX. 



325 



Talleyrand, 78. 

Taylor, Bayard, praises Henry James, 
69; his "Story of Kennett," 102; 
friendship with Aldrich, 100 ; with 
Stoddard, 278 ; work on the Trib- 
une, ib. ; death, ib. 

Tennessee, Mrs. Burnett ignores, 170; 
Miss Murfree's knowledge of, 177, 
185. 

Tennyson, " Locksley Hall," 8 ; 
"Timbuctoo," ib. ; debt to The- 
ocritus, 15; "In Memoriam," 22; 
"Idylls of the King," 132, 133; 
perversity, 225. 

Thackeray, philosophy of life, 7; in- 
feriority of his short stories, ']•] ; 
belongs to romantic school, 100 ; 
typical novelist, 148 ; cynical by- 
play, 149; his complaint, 154; pen- 
etrates George Eliot's disguise, 174; 
poem on death of, 285. 

Theology, and Poetry, 23. 

Tilton, Theodore, 251. 

Tolstoi, admiration of Howells for, 51 ; 
contrasted with Hale, 247. 

Tragedy, in Aldrich's " Mercedes," 120. 

" Tribune," New York, Stedman and, 
6 ; Howells a writer for, 48 ; 
Bayard Taylor's work for, 278. 

Trollope, theory of the seat of genius, 
146. 

Truth, relation to beauty, 21. 

TviTAiN, Mark (Samuel Langhorne 
Clemens), "Prince and Pauper," 
94, 131; popularity, 94; home in 
Hartford, 124 ; a Missouri boy, 125 ; 
journeyman printer, 126 ; Missis- 
sippi pilot, 127; tries mining, ib. ; 
journalism, ib. ; in California, 12S; 
" Jumping Frog," and " Innocents 
Abroad," ib. ; settles in Hartford, 
ib. ; other books, 129; a hater of 
shams, 130; a Philistine, 131 ; two 
English tales, ib. ; a lover of liberty, 
133; his realism, 134; study of the 
American boy, 135 ; short stories, ib.; 
English appreciation of his humor, 
136, 137, 288 ; business sagacity, 139. 



Vallandigham, 303. 

Venice, Howells is consul at, 47 ; his 
book about, 48. 

Verisimilitude, Hale's, 234, 238 ; De- 
foe's, 235 ; Stockton's, 297. 

Versatility of American authors, 230. 

Vile, not proper subject for art, 53. 

Villain in fiction, Howells's, 54 ; 
Harte's, 226, 

Virginia, mother of statesmen, 87. 

Voluminousness, see Fecundity. 



Ward, Herbert D., 197 ; Mr. and 
Mrs. Ward's collaboration, ib. 

Ward, Artemus, his feeling remark, 
58 ; broad humor, 28S. 

Warner, Charles Dudley, birth 
and breeding, 88 ; " Being a Boy," 
ib. ; college career, 89; becomes a 
journalist, 89; his department in 
" Harper's Magazine," 90 ; first trip 
abroad, and " Saunterings," ib. ; 
"My Summer in a Garden," 91; 
" Backlog Studies," ib. ; danger- 
ous reputation, 92 ; not a mere 
joker, 93 ; makes the public take 
him seriously, 94 ; essentially an 
essayist, 95 ; his study of Irving, 
96; originality, 97; independence, 
98 ; " On Horseback through the 
South," ib.; his novels, 99, 100 ; 
lack technical skill, loi; his ripest 
fruit to come, 102, 103 ; home in 
Hartford, 124 ; humor, 232, 289. 

Waverley novels, value of, 41. 

Wealth, obstacles of, 30. 

Webster, Professor, 28. 

Whitney, Seth D., 202. 

Whitney, Adeline D. T., brief 
biography of, 202 ; sister of George 
Francis Train, ib.; maraes Seth D. 
Whitney, ib.; poems, 203; "Mother 
Goose," 204 ; later poems, 205 ; 
finds her vocation, 206 ; a story- 
teller, 207; style, 208; humor, ib.; 
religious tone, 209; mysticism, 210; 
growing power, 211. 



326 



INDEX. 



Wilde, Oscar, his canon of art, 22, 
270. 

Winsor, Justin, 237. 

Womanhood, Howells's representation 
of, 56, and treason against, 58. 

Woman question, Miss Phelps on, 196, 
197. 

Workmanship, Stedman's conscien- 
tious, 15; Howells's, 51; James's, 
59; crude, the fault of American 



literature, 116; Miss Murfree's, 176; 
Miss Phelps's, 193; Joaquin Mil- 
ler's bad, 307. See Style. 



Yale, Stedman's career at, 5. 



Zeruiah, sons of, critics, 63. 
Zola, read in a corner, 82. 




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